Episode 02: Complete the Stress Response Cycle
So if solving actual stressors isn’t enough to deal with the stress in your body, what does deal with it? How do we complete the stress response cycle? This episode is a catalog of a dozen concrete, specific, evidence-based strategies for doing just that.
Found a typo in the transcript? Let us know here.
TRANSCRIPT:
Episode 02: Complete the Stress Response Cycle
Emily Nagoski: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. This is Emily again and Amelia and this is The Feminist Survival Project 2020. This episode is brought to you by Thunder squeaking on her stuffed plush pineapple with a squeaker in it that is not long for this world. If you hear that in the background, that is the sound of Thunder's joy at dissecting the pineapple.
In our last episode we talked about why the process of dealing with our stressors is separate from the process of dealing with our stress itself. *squeaky squeaky squeaky*. The short version is trying to deal with your stress by solving your stressors is like trying to aid your digestion by doing the dishes.
Instead we need to help our bodies move all the way through the complete cycle.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:00:58] So if solving actual stressors isn't enough to deal with the stress in your body, what does deal with it? How do we complete the stress response cycle? This episode is a catalog of a dozen concrete specific evidence-based strategies for doing just that.
Please note: This is a catalog to shop from, not a to-do list. We are not telling you what to do. We're just describing ways that you can help yourself so that you have options to choose from. So without further ado, let's dive right in.
Emily Nagoski: [00:01:30] Number one: Physical activity. I mean, exercise is good for you. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:41] Yeah,
Emily Nagoski: [00:01:42] We all already know that physical activity is good for you. But this is the why physical activity is good for you. We talked yesterday about how the stress response cycle is evolved for the savannahs of Africa, where we were being chased by a lion. When you're being chased by a lion, what do you do?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:01:58] You run.
Emily Nagoski: [00:02:00] And at that point there's only two possible outcomes, either you get eaten by a lion, in which case, none of the rest of this matters, or you survive and when you have moved your body out of the way, it is the movement of your body that tells your body you have moved to a safe place regardless of whether or not the movement actually does get you away from the stressor
Because we have things like the patriarchy as our stressors and there is no distance you can run that will get you far enough away actually to escape, but your body will receive the physical activity as if it has gotten you out. And it can be any kind of physical activity.
Yes going for a run or exercising on a machine at a gym. It can also be jumping jacks next to your desk. It can be just, like, shaking your body and your hands in the parking lot next to your car, going for a walk around the block. Any amount of moving your body tells your body that you have arrived at a safe place. The story I often tell is from my coping strategy in grad school, which was long distance cycling. I would ride 20, 30, 50 miles a day. And even on the days when I would look at my bike shoes and be like, ugh, I just don't feel like it. I knew that on the other side of my shoes and my bike was feeling better. So, I'd put on my shoes and I'd get on my bike and I would go and about halfway into the ride, always it would feel like the chain slipped inside me and the gears spun more freely and all the stress I carried with me would just drop away and my chemistry would change. I would feel suddenly connected and at one with the grass and with the cow that was munching on the grass. And with the sun that was shining on the cow and reflecting down on the pavement that was reflecting up onto my legs, like we were all part of this one big beautiful thing. That is stress completing its cycle through physical activity.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:04:00] People do ask us, "how do I know if I've completed the stress response cycle?" You have that big feeling and Emily gets that feeling from exercise. I do not and this is an individual difference that we possess. Some people find this really easily from activity and some of us, like me, just do not I have never felt at one with the cows from any kind of physical activity, but I have experienced that feeling. It just didn't come from physical activity and happily, we're going to give you 12 different evidence-based strategies. So, if physical activity has never given you that sensation, that's fine. Exercise is still good for you, but maybe it's not the only thing that you need to be doing in order to complete the stress response cycle.
In fact, number two is sleep.
Emily Nagoski: [00:04:44] Yeah. We're probably going to have to whole episodes just about sleep and rest, but for now, I just want to give you some of the basics. The reason sleep completes the cycle is that during our REM sleep you experience dreaming. Part of what happens during dreaming is that your brain processes emotional experiences you had during the day and have had during your lifetime. In your NREM, non-REM dreaming is sort of like a Marie Kondo tidying up of the day's events. It decides what you want to keep and what you want to let go of; what you're going to carry forward and what you're going to leave behind during your non-REM dreaming. And then during REM dreaming, that's when your brain decides where it's going to put the stuff that it's choosing to keep and that's when it goes through those emotional processes. Nightmares are sometimes a product of this emotional process and what a gift those dreams are because it means your brain is doing that work for you without your having to be there for it. Sleep is good for you.
There are three sort of individual differences to pay attention to to make sure your sleep is as good as it can be. One is the number of hours you need. 95% of people need between seven and nine hours of sleep. I'm a seven and a half hours sleeper. Amelia is a 9-hour sleeper. If she only gets eight she really feels it. If I only get six, the whole world feels it and I certainly do. It's one of the primary triggers for my migraines actually, is getting anadequate sleep. So, know how many hours of sleep you need.
Needing a number of hours of sleep does not mean that you need all of those hours in a row. This is the second individual differences dimension to be aware of. What kind of segmentation feels right for your body. The consolidation into like eight solid hours of sleep is not naturally how we sleep.
It's a by-product of industrial capitalism where companies benefited from us consolidating our sleep into eight solid hours so that we could consolidate our work time and be timed to the factory whistle. But some people do great with consolidated sleep. Some people need segmented sleep, specifically bimodal sleep where they get four-ish hours at night, they wake up for a chunk of time during the middle of the night and then they go back to sleep. So they may spend 10 hours in bed and eight of those are spent asleep.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:07:10] Actually, that's me. Like I say that I'm a nine-hour sleeper, but it means I need to be in bed for sleep for nine hours, but I'm awake about 45 minutes to an hour and a half in the middle of that.
Emily Nagoski: [00:07:20] Yeah, and that's normal.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:07:21] That's my yep. That is healthy sleep. That's a good night's sleep for me.
Emily Nagoski: [00:07:25] And some people are segmented or multiphasic sleepers where they get a four-hour chunk in the middle of the night and then they collect the rest of their sleep over the course of the day in bits and pieces.
It really doesn't matter how you get the sleep as long as you get enough accumulated hours in a way that feels right for your body. So, number of hours of sleep you need, segmentation of your sleep, and then the third individual differences domain to be aware of is your chronotype.
What time does your body naturally want to be asleep? And what time does your body naturally want to wake up? I am a natural Lark. I'm an early bird. My body wants to be asleep between 9:00 and 10:00 at night and it wants to wake up between five and six in the morning that has just sort of always been true for me. I've become more phase advanced as I've gotten older, which is a normal thing that happens. At the age of 25 you reach peak adolescence, when you're likely to be phase delayed your body wants to be asleep later and wake up later in the morning. And then after that as if the those of us who were lucky enough to age become more and more phase advanced until we're the little old lady having the early bird special at four o'clock and going to bed at eight o'clock.
So, what time does your body want to be asleep? I have early bird privilege people here my sleep hours and are like, "oh, that's so good for you." I mean there's YouTube videos about people who are like, "I woke up at six o'clock in the morning every day for 30 days and it changed my life." It's not going to change your life if you're not an early bird. If you're not a person whose body wants to wake up at that time of day, it's just going to make you miserable. For example, Amelia.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:09:01] Yeah. I taught high school for five years, when I had to be at work at 7 a.m. Which meant getting up mostly at 5:30 to, like, get ready and leave my house by 6:30 to be at work by 7, when my body really doesn't want to be awake until 9 a.m.
Especially because the years I was teaching, I was 22, 23, 24 probably the years when I was the latest sleeper of my whole life. Since then actually my clock is advanced a little bit and I'm more of an early bird, but if I have a choice, like in the summer when I'm on vacation, my body definitely wants to sleep at least till 8 still.
Emily Nagoski: [00:09:38] So those are the night owls. The people whose bodies naturally want to be in bed around midnight and wake up around 9 o'clock in the morning. Our brother is a super night owl. His brain wants to be asleep around 2 or 3 in the morning and not wake up until 11 in the morning or noon. It's really difficult for him to find a workplace that will work with his natural body clock, which is why it's a privilege to be an early bird.
What we would really love is the world where everybody's chronotype is respected and they can find a way to participate in the economy in a way that does not cause them to sacrifice their body's natural needs. That's another episode. For the time being, you know that sleep completes the stress response cycle, you need to get an adequate number of hours of sleep, know that segmentation of sleep is normal, and know that you have a specific chronotype and if you can possibly work with it rather than against it you're going to feel better. That's number two.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:10:35] And if you're like, I don't know what about any of that stuff is true for me and I don't even know how to find out how that's true for me, there will be additional episodes about sleep, talking more in detail about how to trust your body and to understand how and why it talks to you, but that'll be another episode.
Emily Nagoski: [00:10:52] Number three: Breathing. This is an intervention. That's another one of those things where it's like, "Surprise! Breathing is good for you."
Amelia Nagoski: [00:11:02] Obviously, you have to breathe just to, like, stay alive. It is a literal sign of life and you probably also know that every time you inhale, you activate your sympathetic nervous system, and every time you exhale you're activating your parasympathetic nervous system. That's the rest and digest sympathetic fight or flight. Parasympathetic rest and digest every inhalation every exhalation and that this is why the breath is a symbol of the yin and the yang, the light and the dark, the oscillating cycle, the mutual interplay of opposites. That is the Tai Chi, that is the nature of the universe, the nature of community, the nature of you and your relationships and your body. It is a fractal representation of how you exist in the world, both inside and outside. Breath is not just your life, but a fractal representation of all of existence and when you engage with your breath, you are engaging with all of existence. It's a metaphor and a literal biological necessity that represents the wholeness of existence.
Dude, yeah, it's big deal. You need to do it.
Emily Nagoski: [00:12:10] That's one of the reasons it works. Another simple reason why breathing works is it if you're paying attention to your breath, you are not paying attention to the things that are stressing you out.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:12:20] And you can find breathing exercises to be led through them all over YouTube lots and lots of meditations and we'll put some links in the show notes. Some of them will work better for you and some will work better for other people and there's no better or worse about that. Just everybody's different so find what works for you.
Emily Nagoski: [00:12:38] Can we do one real quick exercise? Let's do it. Let's do a slow count of five.
Inhale, Hold for five. And then a slow exhale for 10.
We're going to do that three times, are you ready? Inhale one two three four five, hold one two three four five, exhale slow, two three four five six seven, all the way out to 10. Inhale, two three four five. Hold filled up, two three
four five. Exhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Inhale, two three four five. Hold one two three four five, and exhale two three four five six seven eight nine ten. And there, don't you already feel just a little bit better? Breathing is a lovely, gentle way to approach completing the stress response cycle. If you're new to the process and don't want to dive in too deeply for fear of getting into like some darkness, breathing is a great gateway. Breathing is also a great way to just, like, skim off the top, the very worst stuff, so that you can continue coping until you can get access to something that I'll do a little bit more deep work. So, breathing. That was number three. Number four:
Amelia Nagoski: [00:14:27] Imagination. I love this one.
I particularly like this one because it's the first one that I discovered really works, gets me to that place of feeling one with the cows or whatever. That sense of having completed the stress response cycle.
Imagination is what got me there. And here's how I did it. I was already a regular exerciser because people told me I should and I do what I'm told. So, I get on the elliptical machine, but usually I'd watch TV or listen to an audiobook and when I learned imagination can complete the stress response cycle, I would imagine myself as Godzilla trampling the state land grant institution where I got my doctoral degree. So, I'd be on the elliptical machine whoosh-woosh-woosh and thinking rahhh, rahh, parking lot, rah rah, bursar's office, and it was so satisfying and so relieving that I got the end of my workout and ordinarily I'd be hot and sweaty and tired, and I was hot and sweaty and tired, but in addition I felt elated and strong and ready for whatever came next and I had never felt that before. I didn't change anything about what my body did, all I did was engage my imagination through a story, through purging of rage and anger and a success getting to a place of heroic, I don't know, winning at the end.
Emily Nagoski: [00:15:49] And it makes sense that your imagination would be able to complete a stress response cycle because we already know that your imagination can activate a stress response cycle. Anyone who's sat there and felt sweaty palms and increased respiration rate just worrying about things that are not currently happening knows that your imagination activates a stress response cycle. This is a way to harness the power of the imagination to complete those stress response cycles.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:16:16] And related to that is our next intervention, which is creative self-expression, which is taking your imagination and yourself and who you are and making a thing out of it.
Yeah, make any kind of thing. It could be all of the arts which exist in our society as a cultural loophole - where you're not allowed to feel strong feelings or express strong feelings out in public, like you can't whoop and holler in line at grocery store. People will be worried about you if you do that, but if you whoop and cry on stage or in a dance or while you're singing, that is an appropriate place to do it. Take advantage of this loophole. Find a place where you can put those big feelings. And it's not just the arts. It can also just be crafting. I say "just" crafting because crafts are meant to be useful, where as arts are meant to be something in addition to useful.
But that kind of discernment doesn't actually weigh into how effective it is as a stress response completer. So, if you knit or sew or do paper crafting, if you love to cook and you feel like "I've made this meal and I'm creating something original" that is the same sensation. You can come from playing the violin just as easily as it can come from fixing up your bike, or your or your car if you feel like that's a thing that yeah pour yourself into.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:37] Do a thing.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:17:38] "Take your broken heart and turn it into art." - Carrie Fisher.
Emily Nagoski: [00:17:43] One of the stories we tell about this is my experience of it. So, back when I had a job I had a day when four students in a row told me that they had been sexually assaulted. Even for me, four in a row is a lot and my job in that moment is to make sure those students had access to the resources they needed in order to be able to heal. I was the first person they had told and thus I was the gateway to them accessing everything they needed to heal and grow. And I had great confidence that they were going to get that. My job in that moment also is to stay in a place of warmth and calm support and loving-kindness and emotional presence.
And when I get home from a day like that, I have to find a way to move through the stress it gets activated in my body hearing these dark stories. Usually what I would do is, like, go for a run or a bike ride and then take out a bath and my marital euphemism will bring me an apologetic glass of wine and sort of feel bad about men.
But this time, I had a deadline because another thing I do in addition to this kind of thing, is I write romance novels because it is good for my mental health. Here's how I know it's good for my mental health. I had a deadline, so I sat down at my computer with these dark stories in my body and I wrote The Proposal Scene.
I put my hero on his knees. I had him beg to deserve the heroine I constructed out of these dark stories. I morphed them into this imaginative world for myself where women are respected and valued for their autonomy and praised for their intelligence and creativity, and I could feel it - what this looks like from the outside was me sobbing on my keyboard while I typed, sometimes so hard I could barely breathe. And by the time I got done I had taken myself, my body, from the place of stress, to the place where my intellect already was of knowing that these students were going to get access to the resources they needed and find their way to healing. My body knew because I had assisted through the process of creative self-expression.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:02] So, can we put in the link below to a link to go buy Emily's book? You might want to know that her pen name as a romance novelist is Emily Foster and her duology How Not to Fall and How Not to Let Go are available and we will link to that. Emily won't link to that but I'll make her do it.
Emily Nagoski: [00:20:18] How Not to Fall is out of print.
You'll find. It'll be fine. So, but this brings us actually very naturally to our sixth concrete specific evidence-based strategy for completing the stress response cycle-
We're at the midpoint so let's just quickly review.
Okay, our first evidence-based strategy was: Exercise is good for you, thanks for coming to our Ted Talk.
Number 2: Sleep- also good for you.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:43] Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:20:43] That's the second TED Talk. Three: Breathing.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:46] Isn't it convenient that these are things you already do all the time anyway? Yeah, but you know you like, you know how to harness them for more purpose
Emily Nagoski: [00:20:54] Four: Imagination.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:20:56] Guiding yourself through or - we forgot to mention actually - that it can be participating in someone else's creative imagination endeavors, like when you read a book or watch a movie and you walk out of the theater and you feel like something different has happened to me and that's that's the same thing. Imagination guiding yourself through a complete hero's journey.
Emily Nagoski: [00:21:16] Four was Imagination and five is creative self-expression, brings us to
Six:
Amelia Nagoski: [00:21:22] Crying.
Emily Nagoski: [00:21:23] Again, this is one where, like, I naturally have always done it. When I was 14, I auditioned for the high school play, because of course I did. I did not get the part, because of course I didn't. But I was, like, genuinely heartbroken and my body was telling me, like, you need to, like, let your body move through this, you need to, like, allow it to happen.
So, I, like, knelt on my bedroom floor and I, like, sobbed for maybe five for seven minutes and then my body was just done. It had released it and I volunteered to join a bunch of production committees.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:21:57] And maybe some of you listening her, like, oh, yeah. All you need to do is have a good cry and everything feels different. Not me.
I don't know how the hell any of you drew the conclusion that it was okay to do that, because I definitely learned, you know, Big Girls Don't Cry and Don't Cry Out Loud and just keep it inside, learn how to hide your feelings. So I believed it when they told me, "crying doesn't solve anything." I believed that was true.
What those people don't know is that though crying may not solve your stressor, it can complete the stress response cycle, which puts you in a better state of mind to address your stressors.
So, I had to learn how to cry in therapy. Like, it took a woman with a PhD from Yale to explicitly teach me how to cry. And it turns out what I needed to know was that while you're crying, if you're trying to stop yourself from crying the whole time you're crying- not effective. But if you just let yourself cry, don't feed it additional thoughts about why you're crying, what the reasons are. Those are the stressors. You're going to deal with those later. The crying right now is to deal with the stress itself.
So you focus on the bodily sensations as you lock yourself in the bathroom stall or wherever you gotta to cry politely away from people who are going to judge you, because you're not going to judge yourself. You're just going to sit there and observe. How much heat do I feel in my body? Where's the tension?
How much snot is pouring out of my nose right now. You just attend the physical experience of the crying and you cry until you don't have to cry anymore.Takes 5 minutes 7 minutes, and it's a cycle. It will end on its own. Yes, even if you have not dealt with the thing that caused that emotional flood, the flood doesn't last forever.
You just need to go through that cycle and then you'll be ready to go deal with the stressor.
Emily Nagoski: [00:23:54] And it will just naturally come to its on end. Usually in a few minutes.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:24:00] And if it doesn't that means we need to go to strategy number 7, 8, 9, and 10, which are all connection. That kind of sadness that won't go away. It's a beacon. It's a Bat Signal that says you need help. You need to reach out to other people to help you get where you need to be.
Emily Nagoski: [00:24:19] Feelings are tunnels. You have to go all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end. But sometimes you're so deep in the darkness, you cannot see your way out, which is when you need somebody else to walk with you through it or to stand at the end of the tunnel be like, "it's over here! Can't wait to see you!"
Amelia Nagoski: [00:24:36] And the easiest, most lightweight of those is number seven: superficial social connection.
Emily Nagoski: [00:24:42] This is you know, like, complimenting your Barista on their earring when you're giving your coffee order. It is having a polite chat about the weather with your seatmate on public transportation people believe the research shows that people believe that if they are silent with their seat mate, both people will have a better day.
It turns out, according to research, if people have a superficial, "nice weather we're having" or "shitty weather we're having" kind of interaction, they'll both people will have a better day. So, this is one of the first signals your brain uses as a sign that the world is a safe place that makes some kind of sense, is this sort of, like, just brief eye contact, a little bit of a smile. Superficial social connection letting your brain know that the world makes some kind of sense and at least parts of it are safe.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:25:33] And if that's okay with you and you're ready to take another deeper step number eight is: intimate connection with someone who is your home base. Someone you love and trust enough, for example, to share a twenty second hug with. 20 seconds is an awkwardly long time to hug someone who, for example, you have just met that would not be a useful hug. If you stand in hug somebody you just met for 20 seconds, that would just be weird, but there's somebody in your life who you can stand body to body with, wrap your arms around that tells your body it is safe and it's not about the 20 seconds counting 20 exactly. It's about doing it long enough that your body recognizes safety and you will feel the shift that same "one with the cows sensation" the loving friends and family and the sun shines a little brighter.
You will feel it happen and feel it change.
Emily Nagoski: [00:26:26] Your body will recognize when I'm with this person. I have come home and I am safe.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:26:32] A further extension of that is the 6 second kiss.
Emily Nagoski: [00:26:34] This is a recommendation from John Gottman.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:26:36] Again, potentially an awkwardly long time to kiss someone unless you love interest them quite a lot.
Emily Nagoski: [00:26:41] But that's the point. A six second kiss every day reminds your body there's someone in my life, I love and trust enough to put my face this close to theirs for this long. It comes from John Gottman. The next thing that comes from John Gottman as intimate connection is the 30-minute stress-reducing conversation. We'll put a link in the show notes with more details about how to do this.
But basically it's you and a really important person in your life spending 30 minutes processing what happened in a day and while you talk about your stressful stuff that happened, your partner's job is to listen and be supportive and make it really clear that you together are on the same team - yeah, girl I feel you - yeah, they're not going to make suggestions for how to solve a problem.
But,
Amelia Nagoski: [00:27:27] just fuck that asshole.
Emily Nagoski: [00:27:28] They're not going to offer advice about, like, what you did wrong in that situation. They're just going to say, "that totally sucks." That sucks. I'm so glad you're home and we can talk about it. Yeah, we are so superior to those assholes.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:27:42] That's right.
Emily Nagoski: [00:27:44] 30 minutes stress-reducing conversation. That was number eight is intimate social connection.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:27:47] Number 9 is connection with nature. Animals, landscapes. How this will work for you is going to be different for everybody, as we've established is true for almost all these things. If for example connection with people is not your cup of tea, some of us learned even early in our lives that people are not trustworthy and are not places we can access safety then it's much easier for us to feel this kind of safety in the presence of animals. It's also true for nature and landscapes. Just looking at a picture of a tree can lower your blood pressure and make you feel more relaxed. If you can actually get out into nature even better.
We both have dogs and Emily's taking a picture of her dog right now and having them in the room shows us how to be in the world because they're experts. They know how to be relaxed. They know how to be themselves. And they know how to show love unreservedly. And that's really good for us.
Emily Nagoski: [00:28:44] And so Amelia does horseback riding I do which is her way of connecting. It's physical activity. It is mindful awareness of her body, but maybe above all it's just time connected with this animal who has a personality and they've gotten to know each other and they feel connected.
But there's also like Landscapes not for some people going and being in the forest being on the for me. It's the beach. There's something about seeing the ocean ending at the waves. Oh Thunder's a little unhappy. Well, now she's better. There's something about seeing the waves hitting the shore.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:29:23] My theory about that is that it's an experience of the Yin and The Yang and the mutual interplay of opposites. Land and Sea, stillness and motion, that makes you recognize your place in the universe.
It's a fractal representation of what everything is. Oh, that's my theory about why people are drawn to the ocean.
Emily Nagoski: [00:29:40] I'm looking at a metaphor.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:29:41] It's a total metaphor. Yeah.
Emily Nagoski: [00:29:44] Number 10 of connection is spiritual connection.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:29:48] I, this is Amelia. I have worked in churches most of my adult life because I'm a professional musician and most musicians end up working at churches at some point.
So I have witnessed people's definition of spiritual run the gamut from a literal dude in the sky, like a man with a white beard and flowing long hair who you can reach out and shake his hand and have a conversation. That's the Our Father Who Art in Heaven. If that works for you, great. That can be a source of feeling connected and supportive and unconditionally loved. The farther end of the spectrum is an atheist who sees something larger and important in the existence of humanity connecting to each other or serving each other or in the divinity of movement itself. For some yoga practitioners, there's divinity in that. For some Tai Chi practitioners, there's divinity in that. Not for all of them, but for some of them that's what it represents and anything in the middle. If you believe that community represents something larger than the individuals who were there in that room, that is a divine spiritual experience for you. So we're not saying that there is a way to experience spirituality or divinity. But if you have in your life access to a sense of the divine that can be a supportive place to experience love and connection.
Emily Nagoski: [00:31:08] You'll notice that fully a third of our dozen evidence-based strategies are some form of connection. Humans are a massively social species. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls us 90% chimp 10% bee. We're basically a hive species. Human beings are not complete individually. We need to move into connection and back to autonomy. It's one of these cycles that we move through.
Number 11 is a different kind of connection also, but it's connection you can do by yourself or with other people and that is laughter. Not the posed social laughter of, like, your workplace holiday party, not the social lubricant kind of laughter. Yes, it is the embarrassing, making strange noises belly laughter. Yeah, shifts your Chemistry. It's impossible to laugh when you're feeling deeply threatened. And so I'm going to it's really difficult to deliberately create those sorts of moments
Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:08] And now we'll make you laugh.
Emily Nagoski: [00:32:09] But now I'm going to try. I'm not I'm just going to tell you about, like, a piece of our history that reliably causes us to laugh. Which is when we were about 10 years old, we were the whole family sitting at the dinner table and Amelia was sitting there silently. Like, I said across the table from her and she was just sitting there silently eating and thinking about stuff and all of a sudden-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:31] I was planning, there was a joke in here. I feel like I can make a joke.
Emily Nagoski: [00:32:35] So, suddenly, totally out of the blue, apropos to nothing that was going on. She just goes, "what kind of toothpaste do they use in the emergency room?" Ten years old, you just, like, made up a joke, and we're like, "I don't know Amelia, what kind of toothpaste do they use in the emergency room?"
And she goes, "Acci-dent. See, cuz there's dent-
Amelia Nagoski: [00:32:58] there's dent in the name and and people when they're in accidents, they go to the emergency room. So it's, it's the kind of toothpaste is Acci-dent.
Emily Nagoski: [00:33:06] The joke itself is not funny. What's funny is this, like, 10 year old kid had sat there, like, making this thing up and then, like, just like, plopped it on the table.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:33:21] And it made me laugh so hard. It makes me laugh because it's so bad. Yeah.
Whatever.
It's to the point where like I can't even tell that like Emily had to tell it because it makes me laugh so hard I can't tell it.
Actually, I think the first time I told that I was laughing and I was like what kind of what kind of toothpaste ha haha ha ha
and I think that meant that damaged my delivery somewhat.
Emily Nagoski: [00:33:53] Our final evidence-based strategy for completing the stress response cycle is mindful self-compassion.
Some of you are going to hear those words to be like, yes, mindful self-compassion.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:34:07] Not me.
Emily Nagoski: [00:34:07] Yeah, other people are going to be, like, ugggh mindful self-compassion
Amelia Nagoski: [00:34:12] What does that even? It's just words.
Emily Nagoski: [00:34:13] We'll put a note of some links in the show notes to a variety of practices.
But for now, we will just do one really quick one, which is simply that you fold your hands over your heart one hand on top of the other. You inhale slowly and gently and as you exhale, you're going to say to yourself the thing your heart needs to hear. You're going to turn toward your internal experience with kindness and compassion. Inhale gently. And as you exhale, you say to yourself, "you're going to be okay." Or you inhale gently and slowly and as you exhale you say to yourself, "you've been doing enough." Or you inhale gently and slowly and as you exhale you say to yourself, "things are going to be alright." Again, we'll put a link in the show notes to about more different ways of doing this, but it works.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:35:12] If you're like me, on the other hand, when you do this, you're thinking to yourself, "Well, how the hell do I know? That's not fucking true." And you kind of dismiss your own perspective because, like, you think that you're not reliable or that your voice doesn't matter and that kind of brings us to how we're going to close this which is by acknowledging the barriers between women and these effective tools.
Emily Nagoski: [00:35:35] Even though we have these 12 evidence-based strategies to deal with the stress itself that will help you return to a state of safety inside your body, this is not a to-do list. They're just pieces of gear you can put in your feminist survival kit and pull them out as they're helpful and leave them there if they're not helpful. You can use all of them. You can use none of them. You can use whatever works, because sometimes things aren't accessible to you. Cherry pick based on what works for you.
We are different and there is no right or wrong. There's not even any better or worse. Remember, we're identical twins, raised in the same household and what works for us is almost opposite. There's just all of us doing our best given our present circumstances.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:36:18] And you're probably doing some of these already and maybe they're working a little bit and maybe you're wondering, "Well, I already do that. How come it's not working for me?" And one of the reasons that we have encountered from a lot of women is they feel guilty about doing these things, like sleep in particular. You think, "Well, I can't go to sleep right now. I should be working." That lie. You probably learned early in your life and it sucks because it's robbed you a feeling well for decades. Maybe your whole life. I'm so sorry it turned out like that, but you can change it right now. Imagine. What would it be like if you could believe that you deserve a good night's sleep. How would you feel if you believed that you deserve a good night's sleep. How would it change your relationships with other people if you could believe that you deserve a good night's sleep and that they deserve a good night's sleep?
Do you want to believe it? Is it difficult to believe?
Or maybe it's not guilt. Maybe it's straight up shame. Like if you cry, you spend your whole time crying trying to stop crying and that is not effective and you're not completing the stress response cycle. You gotta actually let yourself cry, but you've been told Big Girls Don't Cry and Don't Cry Out Loud.
You've seen people who don't cry be praised as strong and heroic. Crying has been stolen from you by a society that doesn't want to see people's pain or take responsibility for their suffering.
Emily Nagoski: [00:37:39] That self-judgment turns crying from something that completes the stress response cycle do something that activates the stress response, which is why it no longer works. Being willing to embrace and accept that crying is a natural, normal way to complete the stress response cycle is what allows it to complete the stress response cycle.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:37:57] So remember that when you cry, you are smashing white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal capitalism. Crying is resistance.
Emily Nagoski: [00:38:05] Do it!
Amelia Nagoski: [00:38:05] Cry proudly. Or maybe you're connecting to a friend and you worry you're taking up their time that they need to give to someone else, or themselves that other people deserve it more than you and you you shouldn't be sucking it up for yourself. But it turns out loving attention is not a finite resource that needs to be rationed.
When we turn toward any kind of difficult feelings, mine, your own, the world's, when we turn toward difficult feelings, it creates more energy for the giver and the receiver of that attention. It feeds all of us. It refuels all of us.
Emily Nagoski: [00:38:38] Connection does not take something away from another person. It gives a gift to both people participating.
So don't forget when the mainstream cultural narrative around labor and self-care says that a person needs more discipline, what they really need is more kindness.
Amelia Nagoski: [00:38:56] When the grand narrative says a person needs grit, what they really need is help.
Emily Nagoski: [00:39:01] And that is this episode of the Feminist Survival Project 2020.
If any part of this was written, it was written by us. I'm Emily Nagoski -
Amelia Nagoski: [00:39:08] - and Amelia Nagoski
Emily Nagoski: [00:39:09] To the extent that it was produced, it was produced by my marital euphemism. And if there's music it's written -
Amelia Nagoski: [00:39:14] By me.
Emily Nagoski: [00:39:15] You can follow the podcast on Instagram or Twitter at @FSP2020 and email us at feministsurvivorproject2020 at gmail.com.
We want to hear from you. We want to know- What are the things you do that complete the stress response cycle? What barriers stand between you and the things that could be effective for completing your stress response cycle?
Amelia Nagoski: [00:39:36] Have you been able to unlearn any of those barriers? What did it take to do that? Or if you haven't done learned them, what would it take?
Emily Nagoski: [00:39:44] Let us know. We hope this helped. If it did and you wish more people knew this stuff. Please share it. Reviewing and rating this podcast helps more people to find it. So, if you're looking for a way to be part of the solution, sharing this podcast, rating and reviewing it is a simple thing that you can do.
You are awesome. We're so glad you spent this time with us, and hey, thanks for listening.
(Ending theme)
Amelia Nagoski: [00:40:12] I have never felt at one with the cows from any kind of physical activity.