392 - What to Do When You Are Way More Stressed Than Your Partner?
What is stress?
Stress is a normal human reaction, and can even be healthy (remember our episode on good stress, or eustress?). Our bodies are designed to process stress by providing physical and mental reactions to it, and these help our bodies adjust to new situations. When the body stays in a state of stress even during downtime or periods of rest, then it can become a problem. Chronic stress and continued activation of stress responses can cause wear and tear on the body.
Stress may manifest as:
Physical symptoms: Aches and pains, chest pain, racing heart, exhaustion or trouble sleeping, headaches, dizziness or shaking, high blood pressure, muscle tension or jaw clenching, stomach or digestive problems, trouble having sex, weak immune system.
Emotional and mental symptoms: Anxiety or irritability, depression, panic attacks, sadness.
Chronic stress is:
Ongoing and may be similar to chronic pain or chronic illness. Chronic stress might increase or decrease in severity but is a relatively consistent presence in one’s life.
Can be due to any number of things, from an unhealthy relationship, to a job that is burdensome and leaves you overworked daily.
Can be ongoing situations such as poverty, health inequity, racism, etc. but because these stressors aren’t only external, but structural or systemic, typical stress management could be helpful, but might not work entirely.
Common symptoms of chronic stress include: isolation or emotional withdrawal, low energy, aches and pains, trouble sleeping, trouble staying focused, change in appetite.
Acute stress:
Happens at a particular time or event and is isolated to that incident. Examples might be having a near-miss car accident, or when you’re preparing for an important presentation at work.
Common symptoms of acute stress include: heart palpitations, shortness of breath, feeling lightheaded, headaches, stomach pain or indigestion, sweating, chest pain.
Body and nervous system are equipped to handle this kind of stress.
Stress and relationships
Stress can manifest in relationships in a variety of ways, such as:
The person who is stressed becomes more withdrawn and distracted, and less affectionate.
The person who is stressed has less time for leisure activities, which leads to alienation between partners.
Stress can bring out people’s worst traits, which may lead their partners to withdraw as well.
Stress depletes people, sapping their cognitive resources.
Stress increases vigilance. This means when you are stressed you are more likely to notice negative behaviors and less able to stop yourself from reacting badly to them.
Stress also makes people more irritable and hostile, which increases the likelihood of fighting. When fighting, stress may make people less able to listen or show interest and empathy. In short, stress turns non-issues into issues and prevents your ability to deal with the issue constructively.
Stress affects our physical and mental health and places additional strain on the relationship.
Dealing with stress
Some tactics for dealing with stress if you are the one experiencing a lot of it are:
Journaling.
Download an app that provides relaxation exercises (such as deep breathing or visualization) or tips for practicing mindfulness, which is a psychological process of actively paying attention to the present moment.
Exercise, and make sure you are eating healthy, regular meals.
Stick to a sleep routine, and make sure you are getting enough sleep.
Avoid drinking excess caffeine such as soft drinks or coffee.
Identify and challenge your negative and unhelpful thoughts.
Reach out to your friends or family members who help you cope in a positive way.
Try to focus on the things that are in your power to change.
Try therapy and/or medication.
If your partner is the one experiencing a lot of stress, then some tactics to help support them are:
Talk to your partner, both about the stress and about life generally.
Support each other: be responsive when your partner talks about their stress, provide your partner with instrumental (taking care of household chores) and emotional (listening to them complain) support, and ask for support when you need it.
Make time for positive moments.
Help your partner take care of themself by supporting them in getting enough sleep, exercise, and healthy meals. Sometimes this might mean spending more time away from your partner or less time together in general, but that can be a positive thing if the time you do spend with each other has higher quality.
Work together to find creative solutions. See if you can come up with ways to fix your situation to alleviate some of your stress or find ways to effectively prevent it from hurting your relationship.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about something that plagues everyone from time to time, stress. We've done a few episodes about stress before including an episode a little over a year ago on eustress or good stress, but this episode is not a rehash of that. Instead, we're going to be talking about what stress is, how it affects relationships, and especially how it affects relationships when each of the partners are experiencing very different levels of stress, and talking about some of the ways we can alleviate that and help avoid some of those problems.
Emily: When I was back like two weeks ago thinking about this episode, I was under a lot of stress. I think when I was in the midst of that feeling, a lot of emotions, I was like I want to write about stress and I want to write about what happens when partners have two different levels of stress in their lives or multiple partners have multiple different levels of stress in their lives. Because currently right now, I feel like I'm at capacity with all of the things that I'm doing. I'm in a play, I have Multiamory, I'm also going to work at my restaurant job, and it just basically every single day is filled to the brim. My partner right now is in between jobs so he's kind of chilling and there's a big difference there in our lives. This is something he says to me, he's like, "Well, you made that happen for yourself," in essence and he's not wrong.
Dedeker: When he told you that, did that make you feel just like so much better and less stressed?
Emily: No, I did not. No.
Jase:
Emily: He's not wrong, I will say.
Dedeker: Let this be a lesson.
Emily: He's not wrong. However, I do sometimes I'm just like, "Damn it," like, "Come on." I am hustling and I feel like the stress is a part of potentially moving to bigger and better things in my life. I want it in a lot of ways but it's also challenging when you're going through it. What about the two of you? I know the three of us are three of the more stressed people I know in my lives.
Jase: Really? Okay. That's interesting.
Dedeker: We battle role models for each other.
Emily: I don't know about-- Sorry, maybe that's not quite the right thing to say. It's more just that we have a lot going on very full lives.
Jase: Like your stress level is the average of the people you host podcasts with? I think that's--
Dedeker: I think that they do say about it. I remember that.
Emily: So 110 at all times got it.
Jase:
Dedeker: Yes, it's hard because all three of us, what we have in common is for people who like saying yes to things. Not necessarily out of oh, we don't know how to say no but out of, I want to do that project and I want to learn this thing and I want to do this creative expression project. I also want to start another podcast for some freaking reason. Like we're those people and it really bites us in the butt more often than not.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. I was just reading a book that was talking about someone, she's a psychologist who had like just become a mother and was working on a big project and then was like, "You know what? I've always wanted to learn how to play the drums. I'm going to do that now too." I really related to it though. I was like that sounds like something I would do.
Emily: That sounds like you.
Jase:
Dedeker: Jase, I've literally been with you for that literal moment. I've always wanted to learn how to play the tabla. Let me buy a drum and go to drum lessons while I'm also in the middle of having a full-time job and two podcasts and who knows what other projects.
Jase: Yes. Gosh.
Emily: The thing that struck me especially a few weeks ago is feelings of resentment towards my partner who has a lot less stuff going on in his life right now. That's not a word that I like to feel. That's not a feeling and an emotion that I like to feel. I really wanted to do this episode because I wanted to move my mindset away from that, in essence. I think in the weeks since I started thinking about this episode, I have felt better, felt more equipped for whatever reason to handle the stress.
When it happens, especially all at once, I think, at the beginning, and we're moving past the pandemic, more to doing things, and I think we haven't necessarily had as much stress in our lives because we've had a little bit of downtime in some ways, not as many maybe obligations out in the world.
Jase: Like we've had a different type of stress for the last two years and now it's like, how do I deal with this other stress again? I don't know. It can take a lot of different shapes depending on what's been going on because it's not that it hasn't been a stressful time but it is different. You're right, it's a different kind of stress than I used to have of just going out and doing too many things or taking on too many projects or having too many commitments. Instead, it was like I have no commitments but then also I'm doing more work or there's all sorts of weird ways that could look.
Dedeker: Let's lay down a baseline of what stress even is. Again, we've covered this on some previous episodes but just as a refresher, reminder that stress is a normal human reaction. Our bodies are designed to get stressed and to react to it. If anything stressing out our bodies a little bit could actually be good for it. When you exercise or dance or even have sex that is stressing your body out and your body is reacting to it.
Stress helps your body adjust to new situations. It's a problem when your body is staying in a state of stress even during rest periods or downtime. What's going on in your body when you're having a stress response? Basically, we experience the physical symptoms. There could be aches and pains, you could feel your heart rate elevating. You could feel trouble sleeping, have headaches. For some people it's high blood pressure, muscle tension, jaw clenching, in some people it shows up as stomach or digestive problems, problems having sex, having a weakened immune system that's just on the physical side.
For other people, it can show up also as emotional and mental symptoms. Feelings of anxiety, irritability, depression, panic attacks, or sadness. The important thing to remember though is that stress is subjective. It's really hard to point to just a random stranger on the street and be like, that person is definitely stressed and this person over here is definitely not stressed.
There's only so much that we can measure with tests and with research. Really only the person who is experiencing the stress themselves can determine if they're stressed or not or how severely stressed they are. I think this gets tricky in relationship because sometimes you can feel like you have a better sense of when your partner is stressed out better than maybe a sense that they have which maybe sometimes that's true. Maybe you can be picking up on things from the outside that they're not aware of. Also, I can't remember the last time that someone told me, "Hey, you're really stressed and I was really happy to hear that."
Dedeker: "Wow. I'm so glad you made that observation."
Emily: Yes, thank you for doing that.
Dedeker: Also, we'll touch on this more later in the episode. So much of our stress is based on our perceptions and our perceptions are subjective. That's not only perceptions of our own stress or how often we happen to be stressed or not stressed, but also perceptions of our partner's stress. Sometimes we can do this weird dance in relationship where we can really tune into, "Oh, I think there may be a disproportionate amount of stress." That can result in a number of different weird reactions. We can become avoidant of talking about our own stress if we feel like, "Oh, in comparison to my partner, my partner's going through some really tough times, and so whatever stress I feel is trivial, so I'm not even going to bring it up," which maybe is sustainable for a little while but maybe is actually a bottling up response that's going to bubble over at some point.
Or on the opposite side, we can get really dismissive if we feel like, "Oh my goodness, the stress that my partner's going through right now is nothing compared to what I am going through constantly," and so we can be really dismissive or belittling of a partner stress as well. Yes, stress has very real effects but then our interpretation of it can be very subjective.
Jase: We'll get into this a little bit more later too when we come back to Emily's example of, and we can even do that to ourselves of, I'm feeling really stressed but this is my own fault because I took on this project so I guess I can't expect any support for it. We can do that to ourselves too, right? In addition to someone else telling us that, or that I'm feeling really stressed and then your partner could say, "Oh, but I've got this going on too," and maybe a third party would say, "Oh yes, that sounds just as stressful," but they might be experiencing less stress or more stress than you that it is, again, it's really important to remember that it's subjective and that your experience is valid whatever that is and it's not just this kind of, well, logically, you have less stress so therefore you shouldn't complain on either side, right?
Emily: We just wanted to point out the difference between chronic stress and acute stress because they are different. Acute stress will happen in situations like you almost get hit by a car, for example, which happened to me a couple weeks ago, or-- Yes, I was fine but I definitely almost did get hit by somebody who didn't see me in my tiny Fiat. Then also something like I left my passport in a cab in Shanghai right before I had to board a plane, that was a huge amount of acute stress but it occurred it might have lasted for the number of hours that whole situation was happening but then it goes away after a while.
Again, you can have those heart palpitations, shortness of breath, feeling lightheaded, things along those lines, but this is the kind of stress that the body and the nervous system are equipped to handle, it's normal stress, it's understandable stress.
Jase: I would even say that it's important to say that that isn't just those accidental disaster-type situations like Emily mentioned that are super acute, but acute stress is also used to describe something like you have a big presentation for work or potentially even you're rehearsing for a play that you're doing that it has a clear end to it's like I'm stressed leading up to this thing and once it's done that stress is going to go away and also there tends to be a purpose to it. Those are some important pieces to remember.
That's in contrast to chronic stress. In chronic stress is that feeling of stress that's ongoing, if you think about like a chronic pain or a chronic illness, the point is it might fluctuate a little bit but it never quite goes away, and that this can be due to any number of things like an unhealthy relationship or a workplace environment that's really unhealthy or just being chronically overcommitted so it's not just right now while I'm working on something but just I'm always doing too much or trying to maintain too many relationships or whatever it is. There's a lot of different things that can contribute to that.
It can also be brought on by things that are more out of your control like the stress of poverty or health challenges or racism or discrimination because of your relationship style or your sexual orientation. There's all sorts of different ways this can come up and if it's hitting this level of being a high enough sustained amount of stress for a longer period of time, that's where we get into what our bodies don't handle very well and that cause these more serious, like quite serious actually health problems isolation, emotional withdrawal, low energy, actual physical aches and pains that a suppressed immune system that we mentioned earlier, trouble sleeping, trouble staying focused, being irritable, not being able to eat, all sorts of stuff. It's actually higher risk of heart attack. There's all sorts of negative health outcomes that can come from that chronic elevated stress past a certain point.
Dedeker: Let's talk about how stress may be impacting your relationships. I'm referencing a Psychology Today article by Amy Gordon titled, Is Stress Killing Your Relationship while You're Not Alone? So we can talk about specifically external stress. We're not necessarily, at least right now, focusing on, oh, there's stress in the relationship because there's conflict between the two of us because we're not sure what if we're going to stay together or we're trying to define our relationship or we're opening up or we're closing or whatever it is. I would categorize those things as internal stress.
We're talking about external stress, stress that's coming from outside the relationship. The way that can show up in relationships, the person who is stressed can become more withdrawn and distracted, they may be less affectionate to their partner, they may be less likely to turn toward. The person who's stressed may have less time for leisure activities which can lead to a lack of quality time with a partner, feeling a sense of alienation between partners.
Stress can also bring out people's worst traits. I know it does for me, certainly, which when you're subjecting someone to your worst traits, even though maybe you're with a really wonderful compassionate partner and they are very empathetic to you, that may only go so far. People do have their limits and so the partners may withdraw from each other because of that.
Also, stress just depletes people and it saps their cognitive resources so you don't have as much of that mental room for maintaining the relationship or remembering to check in with your partner or wanting to do a radar at the end of the day that those resources have to go somewhere and often they're going toward what the source of the stress is.
Jase: Speaking of that, those resources can go toward heightened vigilance, so you're more on guard for some sort of attack, right? If we're thinking about back in our more primitive, ancestral times living out in the wild, it's that kind of I need to be aware for predators and if I'm in a high situation of stress maybe it's because there's a lot of predators around for a long time or there's not enough resources or something.
Instead in our relationships in modern day that shows up as, I'm looking for you to do something wrong. I'm going to be more sensitive to you making a mistake or maybe doing something. I don't know if I trust you, looking for more negative things, more focused on the negative. Then part of that too is making us more irritable and hostile like we mentioned, so more likely to take some little thing and turn that into a fight, turn that into a more active conflict with your partner.
Just generally, you can see this is going to put a lot of strain on a relationship and this is true of both acute and chronic stress, but chronic is where it really starts to become a problem because it's like you can only skate by on that for so long.
Emily: The thing that I really was interested in regarding this whole episode was what happens when there's a big stress disparity between partners when one partner or maybe a couple partners are doing fine having a nice time not very stressed out, happy with their life whatever, and then one partner is extremely stressed and going through it really for perhaps a long period of time or an acute period of time, and I wanted to focus on that today.
We looked at some research regarding this. Now this is from an article by Kira Newman in Greater Good which is from Berkeley and it's titled, Could Stress be Causing the Relationship Problems? Probably. Probably might be
Jase:
Dedeker: You came in and answer that, so they're like no, it's not.
Emily: Actually, might not be. Exactly. The American Institute of Stress, that's a thing out there, they did a 2014 survey and this survey showed that more than a quarter of people surveyed felt alienated from a friend or family member because of stress and over half had fought with people close to them because of stress. That makes sense. I mean, I think that is a really intrinsic part of stress sometimes is that it feels isolating and you feel as though like I'm the only one who's dealing with this right now, I'm very alone in my feelings and so it alienates you from your partners or your loved ones or anything along those lines.
It also just stress impacts relationships in a variety of ways because a stressed partner may feel like they're failing to get the support that they need and like I said they feel ignored, they feel isolated, or if both partners are feeling super stressed because they might be juggling really intense work schedules and also things like parenthood or caring for an ill family member, something along those lines, that isolation and that feeling ignored, it might happen even more so because again both partners or multiple partners aren't able to spend the time that maybe they want to make the relationship a happier, more livable place for both of them.
An interesting thing that this article talked about is that researchers are beginning to look into and understand that that intense fight or flight response, it isn't the only natural response to stress. That instead also stress hormones can really activate our brain systems for caregiving, cooperation, and compassion. This idea that this thing that is constantly potentially harming our relationships or harming the way in which we interact with those people close to us, that instead of it being a bad thing, I guess, it can instead instill compassion and offer a place for support. I like that idea of flipping it on its head a bit.
Dedeker: Yes, I've heard that referred to as the tend and befriend response to stress or to a traumatic situation.
Jase: It does make me wonder if in people like us who live in these more individualistic cultures, if part of why we think, oh, fight or flight, that's the response to it might be something that is just encouraged by our culture and that we're less likely to go for that option of, oh, actually, this is going to bring out my cooperation side. I know that often in a stressful situation, in the times when I do feel like I'm able to be aware enough to ask for specific help of, you know what, it would really help me if you could do this or even just like, "Hey, would it be alright if you took care of this while I do this other thing?"
Sometimes that can drastically lower my stress level. Actually, just experienced this earlier today with a coworker and it was that thing of like, it just happened in the moment but I hadn't even thought, oh, that's a way that I could help manage some of this stresses, getting some support with it. I'm like that would have been a great thing to have been on my mind sooner in that process.
Now, we're quickly going to talk about a few other studies related to stress in relationships just to get you thinking about some of the ways that people are looking at this. This one here is called Stress from daily hassles in couples: its effect on intra-dyadic stress, relationship satisfaction, and physical and psychological well-being. This is from the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy in 2015.
In this one, they surveyed 100 heterosexual couples in Switzerland about their stress over the past year. They found specifically that external stress, so conflict with friends, money, too much work, did bleed over into their relationships. No surprises there. And that the more daily hassles that participants experienced outside of the home, the more stress they had in their relationship and the less satisfied they felt by their relationship. Really showing there is a pretty clear connection between those, a clear correlation between those.
Then also this quote here. They said that women's external stress was particularly detrimental, linked not only to their own relationship stress and dissatisfaction, but also to the relationship stress and dissatisfaction of their male partners.
Emily: I think that's really interesting. It perpetuates this idea that's out there that men only have emotional support from their female partners. If a woman has a lot of stress going on in her life, then she's less equipped to deal with somebody else's stress as well.
Jase: I love to see that study to look into that.
Emily: That's some conjecture there, but that made me think that immediately I was like, huh. I wonder if that's why.
Dedeker: The same team actually also published an article in PubMed in 2015 called Effects of Stress on the Social Support provided by Men and Women in Intimate Relationships. It's like you set me up for that one.
Emily: I did. Here it is.
Dedeker: For this one, they observed 198 young heterosexual couples living in Switzerland to see how they would support each other under stress. This is how they did it.
Emily: Oh, god.
Dedeker: Yes. First, they would put each person through a stressful task. This is specifically called the Trio Social Stress Test, which involves a mock interview and then a math test where participants were being criticized for their performance while they were being tested. It was like--
Emily: My literal worst nightmare.
Dedeker: Yes. That sounds like hell on earth. My goodness.
Jase: I'm sure it was more clinical than this, but in my imagination, it's just someone heckling them, be like, "You sucked at that one. Totally wrong." It is more than
Emily: I'm like, "Yes, I am. I do. I know."
Dedeker: Can you imagine being the one on the research team has to be the criticizer? I imagined there’s probably some people. Oh, yes, some people who are super cut-out for that job, right?
Emily: Yes, 100%.
Dedeker: I was born for this.
Emily: Yes. Oh, god. Horrible.
Dedeker: Okay, so they put them through that task, and then they observe their conversation for eight minutes, and then that's how they really got their data from. These are the results. They found that both men and women were extremely supportive in all situations except for one. The one situation where they were not really supportive was when both partners were stressed out by the situation and the women expressed lots of emotion, the men were significantly less supportive.
As in, like when the women would express things like, "Oh my God, I'm a total wreck." Or, "Oh my God, they must think that I'm a complete idiot," they would be met with fewer hugs, less empathy, and more hostility, ambivalence, or dismissiveness from the men. What a time that must have been. What a time. When the men hadn't gone through this horrible math test, so they were not put in a stressful situation, they weren't stressed, or when their partners, instead of expressing more emotional language were using more matter-of-fact language. The example they gave here is their partner expressed, "Oh, I had to do math." Then men's supportiveness was comparable to the women's.
Here's a direct quote. Something about the particular combination of feeling stressed and being confronted with our partner's negative emotion seemed to be too much for the men to handle. That right there, that just unlocked so many things that I now understand about my last relationship. Mind blown. Not necessarily in a good way.
Jase: Oh, dear.
Dedeker: To me, what I wonder about is I'm like, "Why is that?" I know that so many heterosexual men are conditioned to be fixers. That's the classic complaint is that the woman wants to be heard and the man wants to fix. I wonder if that conditioning is getting the way where if the man feels like, "Oh, I'm stressed. I don't have as many resources to fix my partner's negative emotions. That's just I'm just at capacity. I'm overwhelmed then because I'm just like so confronted with the fact that I don't have the capacity to fix something here."
Jase: I would say, maybe related, but another hypothesis might be if for these heterosexual men, if their partner's emotions, like her expressing her emotions, was already a source of stress for him because he doesn't know how to handle them, maybe because he wants to fix them, like you said, maybe it's related to that. If her emotions are already a thing of stress for him when they've both been in a stressful situation, and now it's like she's adding another stress, that that might take away from his ability to feel like he could support that. Instead it's like, "I want to run away because I was just stressed and now I'm being stressed again."
Again, none of this is a good excuse, but we need to work on redefining some of the ways we think about our relationships and our emotions and our gender roles and things like that. Yes, I wonder. I'd be interested to see if these people have gone on to do any more studies. Maybe that's something we can look into in the future if they've ever tried to dig into like, "Is there anything we can do about this? Are there interventions that are successful? Can we determine more about what's happening here?"
Emily: The final study that we wanted to talk about was called stress and social support in gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples, direct effects and buffering models. There's not a lot on this, but it was published in the Journal of Family Psychology in 2013, and it was a study of more than 100 gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples. The takeaway from this essentially is, quote, "The amount of support participants received from their partner directly related to how satisfied they were with their relationship." That link became even stronger as stress increased.
I think what they mean by that is that if the stress increases and they are satisfied with their relationship, then the support is also going to be higher. I'm assuming that the opposite of that is that if you're not satisfied with your relationship and the stress gets higher, then the support is not going to get higher. It's going to be lower as well.
Jase: It's interesting because I read it the other way around and this is an important point to make about correlation versus causation is that in this case, it's a correlation so we don't necessarily know which is causing which. That's not what this study determined, but I read it more as if I get more support from my partner, I'm going to feel more satisfied in my relationship. If my stress is higher, but I'm still getting more support, I'm going to be even more satisfied with my relationship. I saw the causation going the opposite direction. Again, I think this study is not telling us either, but just that there's some link between those things.
Emily: There's a link between satisfaction and support and stress, if that's happening.
Jase: Basically, if we can find a way to be more supportive than these heterosexual men in the previous study, we're going to have more satisfying relationships potentially, or at least there's some evidence to suggest that that might help.
Emily: Before we go on to the rest of the episode, we are going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that you can support this show. These are some sponsors that really help us out so that we can bring this show to you out there for free. If you are able, please take a listen and if you would like support some of our sponsors, we'd really appreciate it.
We're back. Something I wanted to touch on regarding stress is that stress is perceived and perceived stress is actually in the encyclopedia of behavioral medicine. This is a real thing and it's something I think that all of us should think about because our perception is everything. Our cognitive biases are everything and whatever we're going through at any given time, it probably could be made better or worse by the things that are occurring within us at any given time.
For example, a few weeks ago, I had the exact same amount of things going on that I do now but for whatever reason, and I think it's because I had a few wins recently, I also had some time with Dedeker to hang out and I've had some novel experiences. Yes, it helped a ton.
Jase: You've got that support that you weren't getting.
Emily: There you go. Yes. All of those things I think have made me better equipped to handle the stress that I'm going through, even though it's exactly the same amount of stress, it's the same amount of things going on. My perception is different now than it was a few weeks ago and I feel better. That's great. Let's talk a little bit about perceived stress. It's the feelings or thoughts that an individual has about how much stress they are under at a given point in time or over a given time period.
Perceived stress incorporates feelings about the uncontrollability and unpredictability of one's life. How often one has to deal with irritating hassles, how much a change is occurring in one's life, and confidence in one's ability to deal with problems or difficulties. Now, this is all, as I said, from the encyclopedia of behavioral medicine, but something I wanted to stress on is this quote, "It's not measuring the types or frequencies of stressful events which have happened to a person, but rather how an individual feels about the general stressfulness of their life and their ability to handle such stress."
I think that's so much of it because if you feel well-equipped, then potentially you're going to feel better about that stress, even if it's just a shit ton. If you feel like I have no help or I don't have the resources, the funds, whatever it is, or even that stress is you feel awful--
Jase: It's beyond my ability.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Or even just that feeling of like, I don't think I can do this thing at all versus I think I probably can, maybe this is going to push me, but I think I can make it through but it's really hard is a very different experience from that stress of, I'm expected to do this thing, I need to do this thing, and I just literally do not think I can. That's a very different experience. I think we've all experienced each of those experiences.
Sometimes, like you were saying, Emily, with the same external things going on, maybe your perspective starts off more optimistic and then gets worse as the project goes on, or could go the other way around.
Emily: Yes. Thankfully, mine has gone in a more positive direction, but it could have gotten worse for whatever reason. Yes, there were a lot of reasons why you may be better or worse equipped to handle stress. It can be coping resources, support, your personality, any of those things. Perceived stress reflects the interaction between an individual and their environment. They might appraise that thing to be threatening or overwhelming, and that's going to affect your well-being.
I love this idea. I think it's important to talk about and just a good thing, It was a good reminder for me when I was going through this episode and looking at resources because I tend to sometimes get down in the weeds of my own stress and my own, maybe as my mother would say, victim mentality. If I can move past that sometimes and look at the bigger picture, that's a good thing. It's good to get over myself.
Dedeker: It makes me think of neuroplasticity because I think that can go in both ways in a positive way. I think about my own life experiences, the times when I think about being more stressed than I ever have been. Sometimes learning that lesson of, gosh, when I thought that I hit the limits of my ability or my resources, actually I could go a lot further. I really broke through something that I didn't think that I could break through before and that was good.
Also, I've experienced that on the other side where I head into a stressful situation thinking, "Oh, I totally got this," and then realized, "Oh my goodness, I'm in way over my head," and so I need to learn that lesson of asking for support or taking things off my plate or approaching this in a different way or changing my story around what I think I can or can't take on.
I want to just hit that note to make sure it's not just about, it's not--
Emily: Changing your mind. Yes, you're right.
Dedeker: It's not all about just, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, that's what's going to get you through. I think also changing your perception of stress of in the other direction of maybe it is about my capacity or my resources aren't what I think that they are and that's okay. I can pare down, I can take a different approach. I can say no, yes.
Jase: I haven't failed, but I've learned something from this. Maybe I fail that the thing, but I'm not a failure at life and I've actually learned now that I can approach this type of task in a better way of taking a more manageable amount or getting more support or something. Yes, I like that a lot. That's a great point.
Dedeker: Let's talk about what are the potential causes of there being a stress disparity between people in relationship, people in your life, just between you and your friends. I'm referencing this article written by Elizabeth Scott from Very Well Mind just simply titled, Causes of Stress Differentials between Individuals. Again, the author reiterates that stress is the subjective experience. A lot of us can be stressed out by a lot of the same things. Job, money, being overscheduled, being polysaturated, experiencing a relationship conflict. Again, different people may react more or less strongly to similar circumstances.
There's a number of reasons for these differences. It can be differences in resources. Really stress occurs when our perceived demands of a situation outweigh what are available resources are. That can lead us to perceive ourselves as being threatened. That's what triggers our body's stress response and survival response, and then that creates our experience of "being stressed."
Of course, the resources that we have access to can make a significant difference. When we say resources, that means a lot of different things. That could mean financial resources, that could mean time resources, but it could also mean support network resources. It could mean how you perceive your own coping skills to be. If you have a new project thrown at you out of nowhere that you weren't expecting, but you realize, oh, it's okay because next week is actually a lighter week on my schedule than I thought it was going to be so okay I feel more positive about being able to handle that stress of a new unexpected project because I realize that I have better resources. Versus if I'm in a situation where I'm like, Oh my gosh, the next six weeks are already packed to the gills. What am I going to do? I'm going to be more stressed.
Some of this stuff feels very apparent. There's something about just laying that out to be a point of compassion for people who are experiencing things differently than you are, I think is really important. We can also have differences in our physiology. Some people's bodies and nervous systems are naturally more sensitive or more reactive to stress. People have differences in temperament, differences in their resiliency level, so that can cause people to cope better or worse when they're experiencing stress.
Resiliency is also something that can be plastic. This is something where we can affect that. That's not just set in stone. That can change over time, that can change over the course of your life. Also, people can bring differences in meanings and interpretations associated with the circumstances. This is a big one. This is like the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is this idea that our feelings, and our behaviors, and our thoughts are all linked together. If we can change one part of that pattern, we can change the rest of them.
This makes me think of our individual feelings of empowerment or lack of empowerment. If we feel like a locus of control that's more centered on ourselves, that can make a situation feel less threatening than if we feel like we're completely out of control and we have no choice here. Then I think it makes it easier for there to be a pathway to thinking of a stressful situation as a challenge to rise, to meet, as opposed to a threat that can be really damaging to myself or to my well-being or to my life.
Ultimately, to the best of your ability, the way that you look at life or look at a situation can prevent or mitigate stress. Again, I always feel like the need to put a lot of caveats there because it's like we never want to victim blame and just be like, well the reason why you're stressed about systemic racism is because you're not looking at it positively enough. It's nothing ridiculous like that. There is a certain amount to which like we can lean into that neuroplasticity, we can lean into those areas where we can find some empowerment and that's going to help us recharge those resources to be able to meet stressful situations.
Jase: The last study we wanted to mention here is one that we actually talked about a few weeks ago, and this is from our friend Ryan Witherspoon, who was on the show a few years ago. This is a study called Exploring Minority Stress and Resilience in a polyamorous sample by Ryan Witherspoon and Peter Theodore. In that one, we talked about it before, but basically the concept of minority stress, which is fairly well-studied. It's all those little microaggressions or fear about losing jobs or even macroaggressions of someone outright discriminating against you because of your minority in this case, specifically looking at being polyamorous and potentially how that overlaps with other types of minority stress.
In this one, just to, again, you can go back to that previous episode where we did that two-part about research, but in this one, what they did find is that of all of the different resilience factors, that mindfulness was the one that they found to be the most effective in terms of decreasing the amount of psychological stress that was experienced for the same amount of discrimination that was experienced, that same amount of minority stress.
They did also find that being connected to like-minded community, in this case a polyamorous community, did also help reduce that stress but not as much. That the big one was mindfulness of more-- To go back to what Dedeker was talking about of it's all well and good to say, "Just think different and you'll be fine." That mindfulness is more about training and learning those skills to be able to do that a little bit more. That's not just something you can just say, "Oh, yes. I'll just do it." I mean maybe it is for you and that's awesome, but for a lot of us it takes some practice, it takes some work, it takes learning some skills, whether those are CBT-type skills or whether that's meditation or something more spiritual-based or other types of mindfulness practice that they found that to be the most effective way of, doesn't get rid of the stress, but it would decrease it the most of all the things they tested in this study.
Emily: Finally, we just want to hit you with some tactics and best practices for dealing with stress, both if you are the one going through a lot of stress and if you are a partner of someone who is going through a lot of stress. If you're the one going through stress, this is from an NIMH gov stressed out fact sheet, they talked about a bunch of different ways that you can help yourself deal with stress. The first one is journal, that's one of Jase's favorites.
Jase: I do love encouraging journaling. For me, it just helps getting it so it's not just in my app, but it's out on paper and I can let it go a little more that way.
Emily: I like that. Also, download an app that provides relaxation exercises or tips for practicing mindfulness. We have a couple that sponsor us. Calm, even Dipsy has some like nice soundscape, stuff like that.
Jase: You can find a lot on YouTube for free too.
Emily: Absolutely. There's some great options out there. Things like exercise and eating healthy, regular meals. Also, sticking to a better sleep routine. I just started sleeping better because I'm not letting my cats wake me up at 4:00 AM every day.
Jase: Wow. That's great.
Emily: Yes. I'm kicking them out and putting up the baby gate and it's like, "No, you're not allowed." It's great, yes, because I'm actually sleeping through the night as opposed to getting woken up at a really horrendous hour. Also, avoid drinking things like excess caffeine way too late in the day. Then identify and challenge your negative and unhelpful thoughts. This is a big one for me also, that if I can try to identify things that are causing me stress and try to stay away from them, that's one way. That's not always going to be something that you can do, but if you know that, for instance, not getting enough sleep is going to cause you a lot of stress, then try to figure out ways to get more sleep. Put away the phone an hour before bed, stuff like that, so that you're not having all that blue light in your face.
Jase: Or even-- Sorry. I mean just even the very difficult decision of maybe there's a certain amount of stress in my life that there's nothing I can really do about it. Maybe I can work on mindfulness, but it's just here, right? Then maybe there are some other areas of stress that you could have some control over, like a friend or a relationship that's actually causing more stress than it's relieving. That's a hard thing to look at. Or could, it could, doesn't have to be cutting that relationship out entirely, but maybe spending less time on it, putting less energy into it, something.
Emily: Absolutely.
Jase: I've even found for me, certain video games raise my stress level and in times where I've got other stress going on, as much as I want to play it, I have to be like, "No, I know that this is not actually going to make me feel good," even after I've played it. This isn't going to be a restorative game that I'm going to play, I'm going to save that till a time maybe that I'm less stressed and I can handle a little more stress in my life.
Emily: Our episode with Lola Phoenix where they talked about not listening to true crime podcasts because it was stressing them out or making them feel like, I don't feel good listening to this all the time, stuff like that.
Jase: Reading the news less or listening to--
Emily: That's a big one for me. Yikes.
Jase: Or reading a particular blog or social media or even a podcast that gets you really worked up and stressed. Maybe it's like during this time I need to not do that as much.
Dedeker: Let me tell you, I got to double down on the, like reading the news less. I know we all want to be informed citizens and we want to stay abreast of what's going on--
Emily: Daily and stuff like that's always, sometimes I just, I can't.
Dedeker: Be aware of the diet. The best thing I ever heard was a Buddhist monk said, unless you are on the forefront of negotiating peace in Ukraine, you probably don't need daily updates on what's going on in Ukraine. Use that as your rubric. Stay abreast of the news, pick a particular date and time when you're going to get caught up, and be aware of what you actually need to get daily or hourly updates on. That's all I'm going to say. I recently am trying to renegotiate my relationship to the news and it has had really positive effects on my life already.
Emily: That's great. If you can reach out to friends and family members who will help you cope in a positive way, not necessarily everyone will do that. There are maybe friends out there that would, I don't know, add to your stress like Jase said, so perhaps stay away from them, and people that help lower your stress, talk to them. Then exactly the last one is exactly what Dedeker said, try to focus on things that are in your power to change.
You're right, probably we're not Joe Biden, we can't do anything about Ukraine right at this particular moment in time. Sometimes it's best to limit your exposure to things that'll cause more stress. Oh, and also a last one, therapy. We got to throw it out there because therapy is a good thing and it really can help things like anxiety or chronic stress, even moments of acute stress. I talked to my therapist about the stress that I was going through and it did really help. It was very beneficial.
Dedeker: Then we're going to share some ways of dealing with your partner's stress or helping to enable your partner to help you cope with your stress. First thing to recommend is to find ways to talk about it. I know not everyone wants to talk out their stress, but it doesn't have to look like a particular vent session where both of you dump on the other person everything that's on your heart and mind. It doesn't have to look like that, but if you could find some way to open that channel, it can be helpful.
I highly recommend going and listening to Multiamory Episode 267 where we covered specifically how to reduce stress together. The Gottman Institute has a great formula that we cover in that episode for a stress-reducing conversation that you can do together with your partner. Just finding ways to just open up that channel and connect in a way that makes sense for the two of you. Finding ways to offer support to each other so as in be responsive when your partner talks about their stress to the best of your ability not being dismissive, like we talked about early on in the episode.
Making sure that you're making time for positive moments, for positive little rituals even if it's just like we have 10 minutes together in the morning where we have tea together, have coffee together, we make sure that that happens every morning if we're living together or at least once a week if we're not living together. Whatever it is that makes sense for your relationship, life and the to-do list can really take up all of our bandwidth and you really have to make sure that you're carving out that time to have those little moments of respite together.
I think it's also important to, within reason, help your partner to take care of themself as well. Of course, your partner is their own responsibility. You're not supposed to be somebody's mom or somebody's parent necessarily, but you know, it may mean if your partner needs to get more sleep or they need to get more exercise or they need to get better food that works for them, that may mean more time away from your relationship. It may mean compromising on what the two of you do together and when. It may mean making sacrifices on quantity of time in order to have higher quality of time and that needs to be okay.
Jase: Even encouraging them to do that, if you know that's something that would help them. If it's like, "Hey, you're stressed out. You should spend some time by yourself," that might not land as well, but if you know that they have kind of expressed like this is a lot of commitments, giving them that permission or that suggestion even, can help. Because I know for myself, it's like I don't want to suggest that option to a partner because I want them to know I care and I don't want them to think you're the first thing that gets cut when I'm too busy. If you're able to offer that to them, sometimes that can be incredibly helpful.
I did want to add one piece too to the idea of helping them help themselves is remember that it's them helping themselves at the end though. I think sometimes if we attach too much to, I need to fix your problem, then I get mad at you if you're not fixing your problem as fast as I think you should or in the way I think you should, and then you're just making it worse. By then, you're getting irritated, you're getting frustrated. Also, keep that in mind that do what you can to help but ultimately let them manage it themselves and that you can't fix it for them.
Dedeker: Remember, I think the best thing that you can bring to these situations is a team mentality. Find ways to work together to find some creative solutions or find ways to help buffer yourselves a little bit from this external stress hurting your relationship. Anything that you can do to shift the focus away from, "Oh my God, they need to shape up because their life is out of control," or, "It's all their fault because they're stressed out in this way." If you can make it more collaborative, that's going to go really far.
Emily: Wow. Did we learn something today?
Dedeker: Oh well, yes, I learned something about my most recent relationship as I said.
Emily: You definitely did. Well.
Jase: I think it's just really good to be reminded of a lot of these things too. This is things we've covered some at in different areas. This is something I honestly listened to in a lot of audiobooks about or things like that, especially in times of stress, but it's really nice though to go through this and get this recap, as well as looking at it specifically about how does this show up when we have different levels of stress from a partner because I don't see that talked about that often. That I've found that review and thinking about it specifically in that situation is really useful.
Emily: I think if you see your partner having a tough time, reach out, do as much as you can because I think it'll go a long way. Like some of those studies said, maybe it'll increase relationship satisfaction. Who knows? That would be a good thing. All righty, everyone. Well, we would love to know this week what makes you stressed and how do you deal with it. That's going to be posted on our Instagram stories and we can't wait to hear what you have to say about that question.