Stress Management- Dr Haley Perlus

welcome back to another episode of Christian Natural Health today I am excited to have Dr Haley Perlis with us

Dr Perlis knows what it takes to overcome barriers to achieve Peak Performance as an elite Alpine ski racer

she competed and trained with the best in the world pushing herself to the limits time and time again now with a

PhD in sports psychology Haley continues to push boundaries and drive Peak Performance helping athletes and Fortune

100 Executives reach their goals Haley works with individuals and teams to manage and expand their energy capacity

while increasing resilience focus and drive Dr Perlis is highly sought after as a keynote speaker Professor author

and consultant to division one athletes she's spoken at many events some of which include vistage Tech Canada Elite

Fitness and performance Summit triathlete and Trilogy athletes she is an Adjunct professor at the University

of Colorado lecturing on applied Sport and exercise physiology psychology at The Graduate level she has authored

several books including the ultimate achievement journal and the inside drive and her articles have been featured in

Publications such as thrive magazine Fitness Magazine idea Fitness Journal Epic Times Telluride inside my Vega and

Beachbody she earned her PhD at the University of Northern Colorado with an emphasis on sports psychology of sport

and physical activity her Ms in at the University of Florida in sport pedagogy and her bachelor's degree at the

University of Western Ontario in kinesiology Haley loves both water and snow skiing her favorite meal is

anything that requires only chopping or blending thank you Haley thank you so much for joining us

thanks Lord I'm so happy to be here yeah so tell us a little bit about why Stress

Management is so important first of all well a couple of reasons number one is

stress isn't going away so um you know if we when when we can't

control something then we have to learn how to embrace it and how to be resilient with it and how to use it to

our advantage so in order to you know work with the stress that is inevitable

in our lives we need to have certain tools certain techniques that we can use to embrace it so that we're not just

coping I know I said coping but we're also also thriving with it sure absolutely so what are you seeing lately

with some of your clients in terms of stress Trends are things changing these days

um you know right now a lot of the work that I'm doing is on emotional regulation so stress is creating a lot

of emotion um emotional experiences and emotion trumps logic most of the time and we

don't want that to happen we want to be able to think clearly we want to be able to think logically and do things things

that are going to help us instead of hurt us so really in my practice right now I'm really trying to help people

better regulate better control their emotions because I actually think we have more control over our emotions than

we give ourselves credit for and then once we can do that we can bring back the logic bring back a stress mindset

that's going to actually help us to flourish and grow and so it kind of sounds like you're talking about the

idea of having that mental manager that can say hey maybe you're going down a little thought Loop now let's bring it

back in kind of a thing yeah I like it I like the mental manager I've never heard that term you just gave me a great yeah

I might steal that for me I'll give you credit but I might steal that from you I'm sure

very nice so tell us a little bit about how we can get that like how do you get the idea of wait a second let's pull it

back in what are some of the techniques that you help people to to employ for that a couple of things number one is I think

it's really important when we when we talk about emotional regulation first there are so many different types of

emotions I was in a yoga class this morning and the instructor said we have 86 different types of emotions and I

actually I don't I've never heard that number I don't know what she was referencing but I do know that every

emotion that we have falls into four categories so we need to do is really understand those four categories

understand the benefits of each because every emotion serves us but also understand the consequences of each

because every emotion can hurt us and then we start understanding you know

what puts us into a certain emotion and but then also how we can get out of them so what are the four categories yeah so

the first one I think when it comes to stress we're all very aware of fight or flight right it's our survival emotions

so those emotions are anxiety fear anger worry frustration all the things that

that use energy right so they get us the rapid heart rate skin temperature changes you know muscle tension

neurotransmitters cortisol all those things um that are released when we're

experiencing that fight or flight now the good news is is those emotions motivate us right right they help us

yeah they initiate movement but they are so draining of energy that we experience burnout rather quickly and so what we

want to do is when we experience that we want to kind of assess okay what do I need to do here from a survival purpose

sure but then we need to be able to transfer over to a different emotion and that

second emotion is what we call Optimal emotions

so that's where we're feeling challenged but passionate and hopeful and excited

and confident and connected so it's still using energy right you know we're

still climbing mountains yeah but we're doing so with enthusiasm instead of

anxiety gotcha okay so that was was did I miss the four like so that's that's one and

then we're not there yet okay got it all right yes you've got the fight or flight which is one okay and then you have the

optimum which is the second got it okay and those are really are two stress

emotions okay got it but in order to be resilient to stress

we have to have energy and how do you get energy from recovery so in addition

to this to stress emotions we then have two recovery emotions okay

and those recovery emotions are either experienced in a pleasant way which is

more of like peace and calm yeah and receptive

and then you have what we call forced recovery emotions sad

depressed okay depleted yeah exhausted so it's like it's what it sounds like to

me is that you took the two autonomic nervous systems like the the fight or flight and the rest of our sympathetic and the sympathetic yeah yeah but then

you kind of split them into the positive and negative side of each I love it I've never heard that before very cool yeah

and I actually like to really think about it as you know experiencing them as pleasant versus unpleasant

positive and negative the negative what would we what we would typically think of the negative emotions they actually

serve us right that fight or flight is can still be a motivator that forced

recovery even though it doesn't feel good to be sad sad can be good for us

Gary that's true yeah that definitely makes sense so with the concept of

burnout back to that sense that I see it all the time and I'm sure you see it all the time too how does somebody know when

they're in a place of burnout as opposed to in you know so people can kind of be

trucking along and doing a ton of different things and not recognizing that they're teetering on the edge until they've tipped over what are some of

like the the awareness moments that can say you need to scale back and and put yourself into the other side of that

yeah great question Lauren so what we just what we just mentioned about that forced recovery the feeling completely

depleted and exhausted and sad that's just one characteristic it does not mean

you're burnt out you could actually just be exhausted right but in addition to that emotional and mental exhaustion if

you find yourself it's called depersonalization but what it really means is someone or something a project

a task a group of a community that you once found felt connected to that you

once felt that you wanted to contribute to you no longer feel that way the heart motivation has been you know

is is lost you know not not necessarily gone yeah you just don't feel connected

sure totally that's one sign that's the story that's the second characteristic of burnout so emotional and mental

exhaustion is one this depersonalization something that I really want self-connected to I no longer feel that

related to anymore that's the second characteristic and then the third one

there's three the third one is low big order perceived performance so even though you may be checking off

the boxes like you said we're carrying on we're doing our thing we're we're making those phone calls we're folding the laundry we're walking the dog like

we're you know we're our friends and our family and our co-workers were telling us that we're doing everything but to us

we don't feel like we're good enough we're not doing a good enough job those three together burn out things burn out

okay so somebody recognizes that's me I'm in that place what are some of the steps to climb out of that and to allow

your body to heal so you can get back to your normal optimal functioning yeah

sure here's the best news there's only one way to treat and or prevent burnout

so that's great we don't have to search bar and wide it's not confusing and it is recovery but it's recovery in that

Pleasant sense so we recover to renew

some emotional and mental energy to regain our love for our life and to

build back our confidence and we recover in two ways one way is what we would all

think recovery is is stillness sleep meditation deep breathing the Brilliance

of boredom yeah

do you remember when we were children and before we had you know TV and iPads

when we were kids sitting in the backseat of the car we were to stare out the window

sort of right so that would be that would be Stillness recovery

the other way is what we call Active recovery which is really taking yourself

out of one task that's creating that stress and burnout and putting yourself

into another task as long as that other task really creates emotional and mental

peace and calm and this is where people are going wrong people are taking well

and people will just yesterday I was working with two individuals and they were saying you know we take 15-minute

breaks frequently throughout the day I watch TV I fold the laundry I look at

social media so what that is is definitely Variety in

your day but it's not renewal of energy they're just distracting themselves away

from the stressor but they're not putting themselves in an activity that creates that peace and calm exercise you

know if you are a reader reading a novel listening to music doing a little bit of restorative yoga puzzling all of those

things if they create common peace you're actively recovering it and so

that's something that each individual person has to has to answer within themselves of like does this activity

bring me peace and restoration or does it deplete me further got it right right

and am I just kind of like distracting myself away from the stress but I'm not actually renewing

my energy sense so um you mentioned that you know when we were kids we didn't have all

these screens and all the things what is your opinion of how smartphones maybe

play a role in some of this and some of the stress perpetuation yeah huge role

it's an addiction right and you know if you know if we look at kids you know generally what are

we addicted to drugs and alcohol gambling and our phones um you know and so it's an addiction and

there's a lot of there's a lot of negativity but I can see some positivity too but the negativity is number one if

you're on your phones all day all along you're staring into that screens especially at night that blue light is

basically telling you that it's still daylight so it's really hard for you to go to sleep also what that what those phones

do if you're not using it for a phone you're using it for social media or news right there's a lot of negative

um information being fed into you there's also some um intimidation some jealousy some Envy

everyone has a better life than me why are you know so there's and it's not real so there's not a whole lot of

authenticity there so there's there is a lot of things that are detrimental Plus

even if we use it for good because you know there is a lot of Education there

is a lot of wow keeping in touch with your friends and being excited for everyone and looking at wow they got to

do this maybe I can do that so there's some you know motivation but we don't many of us don't have the

discipline to turn it off so again you're just not you're just not being able to turn it off so I'm I'm a

I can see the pros and cons I'm more inclined to want to ask people to turn the phones off so just put the phones

down unless you're actually going to pick it up and call a friend yeah there's ways there's good and bad ways

to use all technology right it's like anything else for sure so something just

as a side note as you were talking about how it's an addiction um so in my practice I do a lot of neurotransmitter testing which is a

urine test shows me breakdown products and what I'm seeing over and over and over again is that people's

catecholamines are in the gutter like they're so dopamine norepinephrine epinephrine adrenaline and not

necessarily always dopamine although I've seen all three of them in a lot of people but the adrenaline all the time and as you're talking about the idea of

addiction that's the dopamine hit if you're constantly doing that you're depleting your stores so recognizing

where those things are coming from is absolutely huge for sure yeah and don't we want to like don't we want to really

take advantage of those dopamine hits so if we're right yeah sure for sure so and

it would be great right yeah absolutely so and kind of along those lines is like

a good version of the dopamine hit so you're real big into exercise tell us a little bit about how that can be

restorative for people and how people can learn to use that to their advantage but physical activity is a human

movement is the best way to change your emotional state it is scientifically proven if you can also get outside while

you're participating in this activity um you know all of the vitamins that we get the sunlight everything

um birthing getting your feet in the in the ground hugging a tree while you're on a hike somewhere

right all of that all of that feeds the soul and it's the greatest way to

quickly change your emotions from an unpleasant to a pleasant it doesn't only have to be exercise so there's a couple

things number one is it could also there's there's exercise but there's also just movement and they're not the

same thing exercises where we challenge ourselves exercise is when we're looking to you know Build and Grow movement is

just getting blood circulating and that could be in small movements large movements stretching and you might

exercise every day for an hour but you also may be sitting the rest of the day so you have to ask yourself you need

both exercise and movement throughout the day to restore that emotional and

mental energy yeah that makes sense and I've seen some of those studies that have suggested that you're better off

moving throughout the day in small like moderate amounts than intensely exercising and then sitting the rest of

the day I find that so fascinating but look at them there's two different things completely yeah that's really

interesting very cool so um and you also kind of alluded to yoga and deep

breathing and things like that if somebody's never done this before where do they start a couple of things I um when it comes to

deep breathing for stress I love a lot of them I work a lot with athletes and a

lot of the athletes that I work with have panic attacks for many reasons you know just you know just competitive

anxiety or just you know just the world in which it is right now um a lot of panic attacks and so what I

like is belly breathing and there's there's reasons why and I'll share with you but belly breathing is literally

taking your hand placing it over your belly and when you inhale feel your belly button push into your hand when

you exhale feel your belly button contract and what you're doing is you're bringing your breath from your chest and

shoulders which is what happens when we're feeling that that fight or flight stress and you're bringing into your

diaphragm and then what you do is maybe start on a count of two and then you increase it to

three four and you um and you go ahead with that physiologically lower your heart rate

change your skin temperature release muscle tension mentally

I'm doing a little bit of choreography here I'm using visualization and I'm and I'm focused on my my core it's literally

practicing a mindfulness technique called centering my thoughts are literally on my hand which is on the

center of my body so I'm not thinking about my past my current or my future stressor thinking on about my hand on my

belly button feeling my belly button push out feeling it contract emotionally

I get that renewed sense of energy calm peace yeah so a lot of times I've

discovered when people aren't really used to meditation it can be really distract really difficult to you know

bring your mind back to the moment and I'll usually tell them to like focus on your breath focus on your heart rate focus on the feel of the chair but I

love the fact that you're incorporating that together with the fact that your hand is on your belly that gives them

something to focus on makes it so much simpler ball it's tangible another thing about

meditation that you can do is I love this and it kind of gets everybody outside and moving around but I love

asking people just to go out for a five minute walk maybe even two minutes maybe one minute just stick your head out the

window it doesn't matter but then then take a second 30 seconds let's say and

just focus on what you see and then switch to what you hear and then switch

to what you smell and then switch to maybe you know maybe you taste something in the air and then switch to how the

ground feels under you so what you're doing is going from one sense to another sense but that's an active type of

meditation allowing you to get really present and calm your mind with a little bit of instruction

and because meditation can actually it's funny it's a recovering technique but it can actually feel quite stressful when

you're when you're starting yeah if you're trying real hard and you're struggling

so this way you know walking and just really getting in touch with each sense is the way for you to to start the

initiation of meditation it's so interesting is that as you're talking I'm thinking of like our

ancestors would be so baffled by why this is even necessary because it was something that was so natural

historically but because of the way our world is our everything is so fast-paced

we have to really take that moment to get back into you know what what used to be totally natural so

um you also talk a little bit about the idea of recognizing when you're fixated on wanting a particular outcome in a

certain situation and letting go easier said than done what do people do in that

scenario if there's something that they really want and it's outside their control

you know it's a it's again I'm just gonna go to the Yoke my yoga instructor today and and in my personal life we

there is something that um my boyfriend and I really really want and we're not getting it right now and my yoga

instructor this morning she said stop trying to stop trying to focus on what's right or what's wrong and focus on

what's working and not what's not working and so it so that allows me to think

okay my life is what it is right now we don't currently have what it is that we

want what's still working in our lives you know where are we still where are we

still connected where are we still moving where are we still growing where are we still learning so you really what's still working where am I healthy

and to me that allows us to live with the fact that life is sometimes unfair

to live with the fact that not everything is within our control but if we stay present and we still focus on

what is working we're okay with that in addition just yesterday actually I was

um being interviewed on a radio on a radio show and it was very similar question and I brought up Zach Brown the

the singer the songwriter and Zac Brown has a song called letting go and and the

lyrics which I just it's I I have a book of lyrics and quotes that I just that I

just keep when I love and I wrote his lyrics down keep your heart above your head and your eyes wide open you know

um and then it talks about how you focus on the things that you can change

forgive the ones you can't you got to let them go

so I believe you know this may be beyond the scope of today but the act of

forgiveness huge huge forgiveness allows us to let go of

things that we want that we don't have but there's something there's something there there's some type of connection

I definitely get that for sure and it sounds like essentially you're just describing the concept of of gratitude

practice looking at what you do have so that you can kind of just shift to the perspective so yeah that's great love it

so um how can we learn to identify triggers that tend to make us stressed

and to the extent that we're capable back to kind of the control question how do we kind of rearrange our

circumstances so that we can at least minimize those triggers that tend to bring those things up for us

sure so I actually think it's fairly straightforward to be honest if we really sit down and focus for a moment

and get real with ourselves you know look at the last week look at the last couple of days we're pretty clear on

what we know gets gets the best of us we really know our triggers I don't think

we have to search far and wide to understand our triggers but what we do need to do is engage in some training

and so I'm going to use myself as an example I am I'm a fairly Pleasant individual uh but when I do find myself

getting angry that emotion I used to tend to linger in it way too long so I

too was going through exactly what I was sharing with you Lauren at the very beginning emotional regulation and I

wanted to train myself so that when when I get triggered um I'm I'm ready I'm ready to not just

protect myself but I'm ready to embrace and I'm ready to move forward and I'm ready to stay present so for myself I

had training um calendar reminders at 11 30 3 30 5 30

9 pm it does not matter the time I just knew that I'm a pretty good I'm pretty good in the morning it's when the day

continues on that I start getting triggered so it's not only what triggers you but also the time of day I think

we're all familiar with that really so at 11 30 my calendar reminder said

Let It Be and whether I needed to let something be in that moment or not doesn't matter I

stopped took inventory of my emotions and my thoughts is there something that

I need to change and if there was I would listen to music go for a walk call a friend look at a funny picture like

just do something for myself same thing at 11 3 30. it didn't say Let It Be it

said chill the F out okay and then you ask yourself is there

something that I need to chill out from 5 30 it was are your emotions serving you and 9 pm it's present and again

those four times the day I may have gotten my calendar reminder and I'd be like I'm good yeah I also may not have

been and then as you engage in this training when I do find myself getting angry I've done the training I have the

skill set I'm ready to use the tools for me to not stay angry use my anger wisely

and then transition out smart yep so when you know what your triggers are you can set yourself up for Success so that

you know that like almost like you're training yourself to build a new habit to check in with yourself on a regular basis so I I also think that we can

prevent so for example um nutrition let's just go with nutrition you know so many people you

know and I'm definitely like the evening Munchies right like the evening is when I want to have the worst foods for

myself and you know maybe it's maybe some people transitioning home from work that's when they kind of you know go

into the pantry and eat whatever again it's usually around the same time

so for me let's say eight o'clock was the time that I would you know start Comfort eating and start emotional

eating so what I did for myself is at 7 30 whether I was hungry or not at 7 30 I

ate something healthy and it could have just been you know drinking water and lemon but I ate something healthy to

prevent the trigger at 8 pm there's have you read there's a book by

Charles duhigg The Power of Habit you read that one I know that I haven't read it but I do know the power of habits yes

so I I usually tell my patients he's got this great story at the end of it where

he says that every day at three o'clock he found himself craving a cookie and he was trying to figure out what is it that he's actually craving and so he

brainstorm alternative Behavior so that at three o'clock when that trigger hit he would do some other behavior and if

he still wanted the cookie he'd go eat the cookie but then he'd figure out what he's gonna try the next day and what he ultimately figured out is it three

o'clock he was bored and he had to go down to the cafeteria to get the cookie and then his desire for boredom was

better so he instead when three o'clock hit he'd go chat with a co-worker and then he didn't want the cookie anymore because he's satisfied

so that's what that reminds me the only way to replace one Behavior one

sorry the only way to eliminate one behavior is to replace it with something else

and that's exactly what he says so very cool yeah the don't think of the purple

elephant don't think of the purple elephant don't think of a purple elephant that just does not work oh God

I think blue penguin or whatever it might be I have a different idea in mind for sure love it

um tell us a little bit about like time management for I mean you work with a lot of high Achievers so the super type

A people who fill their schedules or maybe the people that you know don't know how to say no and they are pleasing

everybody else but either way they end up with way too many things on their plate and they're trying to do too much where do people start to begin to kind

of scale back sure and there's so much time management tools out there I actually focus on

incorporating the recovery um bouts or recovery pauses in our day

and those could be 15 minutes 10 minutes five minutes even less than one minute

so it's really I don't even look at people's schedules I actually afford to see well you know maybe you should put

this here or that there I'm actually purely focused on incorporating recovery frequently throughout the day and it

really depends uh you know on your career it depends on your lifestyle it depends on a lot you know if you're a

surgeon and doing eight hour surgeries you can't you can't excuse yourself so

but then there's other times when you can actually take five minutes every every 60 minutes or so so but the point

is is to really look at recovery abouts and from my perspective time management

has to come with a mindset change so my background is sports psychology professional athletes do not recover

when they have the time and that's typically what we say to ourselves I'll recover when I have the time

professional athletes also do not recover as a reward but we say to ourselves I'll recover

when I get all these emails done once I get all these things done it's the wrong mindset professional

athletes have recovery built into their performance wellness and happiness

programs we need to understand that mental and emotional recovery is a

non-negotiable so once we and here's the best thing about it once you start to incorporate

again 15 minutes 10 minutes five minutes even less than one minute if you just have like a bunch of calls to make

between every call take one minute for gratitude one minute to move your body

one minute to listen to uh well you know one minute of a song one minute for belly bleeding belly breathing but what

happens is when you take these recovery bouts when you go back to your stressors

you're more efficient you're more effective you make less errors time

actually frees up absolutely so we've got to change our mindset about

the recovery piece it's a non-negotiable and then just go ahead and rate the

benefits from there great and so you also talk about one of the techniques for Stress Management is

the idea of finding your purpose just kind of a big topic so where do people start as far as you know finding

something that brings them joy that they can begin to focus on as a priority that

they can they can place in their schedule in their lives yeah so purpose is is huge you know when

the going gets tough you know I know a lot of people say the tough go shopping but maybe but when the going when the

going gets tough it is your purpose that will get you out of bed and help you go right left right left through life and a

lot of people you know a lot of my teachings is I think shifting people's Focus too because when people say folk

when people think about their purpose a common thought is to think about their

roles in life what's my purpose well to be the best mom I can be what's my purpose to be the best husband to be the

best leader to be the best teacher to you know those are actually roles that

we play in life what our purposes are who we are when we are our best self

what our top values are what impact we want to make on the world you know those

are really purpose I'll use myself as an example to help so when I think of my three best words who I am when I'm my

absolute best three words right it's like the sunshine is just shining all

over me and what the sun gives the Earth is what my brightness gives me right I'm curious as opposed to judgmental curious

I want to learn I want to understand which helps me to listen and then I'm a strength finder I look for everyone's

strengths including myself and I'm my best those three words are really a daily representation of my purpose

those three words right curious and strength finder who and what I want to

be for myself and for others and I use those three best words to be a

teacher to be a girlfriend to be a daughter to be a sister to be a friend

and when I'm having a bad day which happens when I focus on my three best

words or my top values in life which for me is health love and adventure

those things that's my purpose that gets me out of bed and allows me to be the

role that I am does that make sense absolutely absolutely so then that's the

motivator for you and you feel like you're at that low ebb yeah

95 of the time I'm not going to say it's perfect but 95 of the time

it it allows me to do something for myself and others

so what have I not asked you that you want to make sure you leave with our audience let's see what have you not asked me

um you know I think it's really here's a great technique so I mentioned you know in less than one minute sometimes

recovery abouts and you had mentioned earlier gratitude I'm spreading this little reframe around

because in my in my trainings people just find it a huge Aha and it's helping

so I want to share it with your audience as well one way to reframe our day

when we're really unpleasantly stressed when we're feeling that fight or flight or even that forced recovery we look at

our days what we have to do next right what do I have to do next what email do I have what what kid do I have what

laundry do I have but all these what I have to do next that keeps us feeling unpleasant

let's change it up what do I get to do next get to support how do I get to be

challenged what do I get to learn how do I get to be pushed all of the gets to

again it doesn't change your day because sometimes your day is not is not controllable but it does get you to look

at it in a little bit more of a different light a little bit more of a challenge passionate connected excited

light so and what do I get to do next is gratitude for you and your life

absolutely where can people go to find out more about you best place is my website so Dr Haley

perlis.com such as Dr and then h-a-l-e-y-p-e-r-l-u-s.com you can opt in

for a weekly mental toughness moments you can connect with me directly uh best

place to find me is the website I will link to that in the show notes and thank you so much for all of your

time and wisdom Haley this has been great thank you Lauren I'm so happy to be here are you looking for a holistically

minded Healthcare practitioner who truly treats root cause rather than symptom suppression unfortunately even in the

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