The MindSpa Podcast
The MindSpa Podcast is your go-to space for meaningful conversations around mental health, healing, and personal growth. Hosted by Michelle Massunken RSW and Tina Wilston RP, co-founders of MindSpa Mental Health Centre, each episode explores key mental health topics through expert interviews and thoughtful roundtable discussions.
From managing stress and building stronger relationships to navigating invisible challenges, the MindSpa Podcast offers grounded, professional insights in a warm and accessible way. Tune in weekly for supportive, real-world conversations to help you feel seen, supported, and empowered on your wellness journey.
The MindSpa Podcast
Ep 14 Can Your Beliefs About Stress Change How It Affects You?
Could your stress actually be helping you perform better? And is it possible that your mental health challenges might become your greatest strengths? In this myth-busting episode, we challenge two fundamental misconceptions about mental health that might be holding you back.
The first revelation: not all stress is bad. We explore how our beliefs about stress dramatically impact our physiological responses. When we view stress as beneficial rather than harmful, our bodies respond differently. Through the lens of the Yerkes-Dodson law (the stress curve), we discover that moderate stress actually enhances performance, while too little leaves us unmotivated and too much leads to burnout.
We distinguish between chronic stress—the relentless pressure that never lets up—and acute stress, which comes and goes. Most of us have it backward: we catastrophize about acute stressors while underestimating how chronic stress fills our "stress bucket" day after day. This insight explains why seemingly small triggers can cause outsized reactions when we're already carrying a heavy stress load.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we share practical strategies for recontextualizing stress responses. Through personal stories, we reveal how physical activity can transform racing thoughts from overwhelming to manageable. The simple act of raising your heart rate through exercise can completely change how your brain interprets the same sensations that accompany anxiety.
Our second myth—that you cannot be successful if you struggle with mental health—crumbles under scrutiny. Many high achievers not only cope with mental health challenges but channel them into their success. From comedians to business leaders, these struggles often become their greatest source of creativity, connection, and resilience.
This episode offers more than just myth-busting; it provides a transformative framework for working with your stress and mental health challenges rather than against them. By shifting your perspective and implementing practical strategies, you can turn what once felt like limitations into catalysts for growth and achievement.
All right, so welcome back to the MindSpot podcast Today's episode. We're actually going to be doing myths and I actually I like this one because there are so many myths about mental health and you know, beforehand we were sort of chatting about this one and we had some juicy stuff to talk about stress, right. So stress one of the biggest myths is, we know, is that people think all stress is bad and actually that is not true at all. So we are going to enlighten you guys a bit about stress and there's good news here, because we always think that all stress is bad. We're going to tell you how there's actually some really good stress. So I'm gonna let you kick it off.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, um, I think. Yeah, this is such an important topic. I think, when it comes to stress, we have to be able to differentiate the different types of stress. Yeah, there is chronic stress, which is different, right? Think of us driving on the highway and our foot is on that gas pedal and it's constantly on that gas pedal. At no point do we move over to the brake or at no point do we sort of like let go of it a little bit and just let the car cruise. It's constantly there.
Speaker 1:Pedal to the metal, pedal to the metal, all the way.
Speaker 2:And so at that point we're always in this rev mode, constantly and continuously, and that's chronic, right, and that's where we see things like anxiety, we see things like insomnia, burnout, because there's never a period of relief, there's nothing that gives that gas pedal a relief from the pressures of life. And then we think about the acute stress which, as humans, I think none of us are exempt from. No, you don't have us are exempt from no, right.
Speaker 2:You don't have a day exempt from it. There's not a day you know where it's like, where are my car keys, where's my phone? You know I'm running late, there's traffic or the kids, or something along those lines. Like, life is going to give us stress every single day, and that's one thing I talk to my clients about. Right, like every single day you're going to have a dose of stress. Yeah, that's, that's a guarantee. I can guarantee you that one way or another.
Speaker 1:It's also all relative, right. So if this is the worst thing that happened to me today, it's going to be the thing that, like, drives my stressor up. Cause we all know if something really really bad happens first thing in the morning. Anything less stressful than that all day actually doesn't feel like that big a deal. That's nothing compared to like my tire falling off my car on the drive-in tour Exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly so.
Speaker 2:we put it in perspective and we're able to kind of bounce back a little bit Right. But I think one of the things just in line with that point is when our resilience is low or when we've been through chronic stressors, even the acute stressors can feel significant. Even the little things can really take us off right Off track a little bit or cause us to feel dysregulated in different ways. But I think the idea is to recognize that acute stress is a part of the human experience. We're going to have stressors every day, regardless of what the day looks like.
Speaker 1:Expect it, embrace it, don't fight it. Right.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And a lot of the research. And I remember listening to a podcast or not podcast, sorry a TED Talk. It was a long time ago now, but it was an incredible TED Talk because it was a family doctor and she was talking about stress and she was talking about the research behind stress because she had spent her whole career up to that point talking to her patients about stress and how they had to reduce their stress and stress is bad and all of that. And then the research started showing that people's feelings, their beliefs about the stress actually were the things that made a difference on their physiology and how they received that stress and whether or not their blood pressure would rise or whether or not they would have cortisol release. And all of that had to do with whether or not they believe that stress to be bad for them or whether they believe the stress to be good for them. And so doesn't that change the entire conversation around stress?
Speaker 1:Because if you believe that stress is a positive thing and we actually do know that we are designed to be stressed, right, we know our cardiovascular system needs to get stressed in order to improve the cardiovascular system. We know that our muscles need to be stressed in order for them to grow and get stronger. We know that. Even what we see in parenting if parents kind of over-parent their kids and protect their kids from any stressors or any challenge, that actually just lowers the child's resilience over time. They need a certain amount of stress to learn and grow from. But if we teach them all difficult feelings or all different difficult situations are bad, they're going to avoid them, we're going to avoid them and that's actually not going to be for their best interest, exactly.
Speaker 2:And that reminds me of the Yerkes-Dutson law, right, which is also known as, like, the stress curve, and so if you haven't seen that before, I would. I would definitely Google it to take a look at it. But ultimately, the Yerkes-Dutson law, the school thought behind that, it's this inverted U and it tells us that when we are at the beginning of that U, where there is very low stress, performance is also low. Yeah, we don't care, we don't care. Yeah, there's no motivation, there's no drive, there's no reason why we do what we do yeah there's nothing, and so there's no performance.
Speaker 2:That's there yeah when we're at the other end of that curve, where our stress levels are so high, again, that chronic piece for such a long period of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that will lead to things like burnout, anxiety, right, all the different things that we know happen when our stress levels are high for such a period of time, whereas in the middle of that curve, where we find our performance is optimal, that's when we're experiencing moderate levels of stress, and so there is a level of stress that we need to think about when we performed our best, right, when there was a time crunch, when there was a deadline, when there was an expectation or accountability to some level. But in those moments our performance is optimal because there's a certain level of pressure and a certain level of stress that we're engaging in. That's requiring us to move into action, and so stress is not inherently bad. It's one depending on the type of stress, whether chronic or acute, and two, the duration of the stress how long has the stress or how long is the stressor a part of my experience. But ultimately, to be able to optimize our performance, we do want to have some stress level to move us into action.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and I think that one of the other pieces people don't really think about is how often we don't realize how much we're stressed out by something, when it comes to the chronic stress until the thing is over.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we very often underestimate the role of chronic stress and we overestimate the role of acute stress and we actually have it very, very backwards. And I saw this so keenly during COVID because when it first happened which let's call the acute stressor of, hey, we're shutting the world down, you can't go to work anymore, you can't go out in public anymore, you need all this distancing and all of that. What I noticed is a lot of people were like, well, I didn't really like going to the grocery store anyway, what's a mask? It doesn't really matter, I'm enjoying working from home, I enjoy not having to commute All this kind of stuff. Right, they're sort of looking at it that acute stressor and I'm going, but the world is no, okay, well, we're good. Okay, I'm not going to try to make you feel stressed about something you don't want to.
Speaker 1:I was just surprised by it. I'm like, guys, I'll be reacting differently to this, but okay, yeah, Now fast forward two years later and we all remember the ups and downs of those two years of of.
Speaker 2:Okay, you guys can be out there.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, no you can't, and you know the school's closing down the second time and and I even remember there was, it was just before towards the end where everybody was looking to get together again with their families for Christmas. So it was, it would have been the third, I want to say the third year or the third Christmas being affected and everybody was planning to go and then December 17th it had been the second year, but December 17th they're like no, do not get together with family members. We're having a surge and all that kind of stuff. And seeing people's reaction to it, that was like a very strong reaction. People had to it and then they were like why am I? Why am I reacting this way? I'm like, cause, you saw the light at the end of the tunnel and you actually started recognizing. Oh, this was bothering me more than I realized. And then we were, we were back to it again. And so I think that we do I like using we always like using analogies right In our line of work. We really love analogies.
Speaker 1:I also think of stress as like we have a one bucket actually for stress. We don't have my home stress bucket and my work stress bucket and my right, we just have one bucket and chronic stress keeps that bucket a certain level full all the time, right? So I would always tell people COVID is creating you're wondering why you're reacting this way, but COVID is making your stress bucket possibly half full at all times. Your baseline is different. Your baseline is now different.
Speaker 1:We're seeing this now in the environment where there's so much happening in the news and all the stressors that are going on with just pick a news headline and they're all keeping our buckets a certain amount full at all times. So when you're trying to figure out why am I so sensitive, why am I reacting this way, all that, like you said, the acute stressors can all of a sudden make your stress bucket overfill, start spilling over, and that's when you're having like big emotions, big feelings, maybe not functioning very well. Be very self-critical about it, cause it's like, well, that thing, that acute stressor isn't big enough to explain this reaction and I've not realized and become accustomed to, because we're good news, we're adaptable.
Speaker 1:Bad news we adapt to that stress and we don't even realize how it affects us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's a really good point. Um, I think that's the idea is just the building the tolerance, yeah, of the stress over time and not realizing that, okay, this is starting to become chronic, right, I'm experiencing stress every day, which kind of goes back to some of the things that I talk to my clients about, which is, like, knowing very well that there is going to be stress every day, I'm going to experience something today that's going to lead me to feel stressed out. What, then, is my output? Yeah, right, knowing that there's going to be an input of stress, I have to now be intentional about what that stress output looks like for today. Yeah, and so almost going into each day with that in mind of like, okay, I don't know what it's going to be, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I know that at the end of the day I'm going to go for a walk. Yeah, at the end of the day I'm going to insert coping or healthy strategies in there.
Speaker 1:you know but ultimately, what are your favorite recommendations? I like the walk idea. The walk, yeah, nothing too intense. Going on a trail yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like, I like that idea, just because, again, it's you're, you're in the moment, right, like you're hearing it, you're smelling it, you're seeing it you're really being able to Engages all the senses it you're seeing it, you're really being able to exactly so for me, I think, that's like that's something that I love personally and I enjoy doing because, um, it works on so many different levels, you know, and I think that it doesn't have to be what that.
Speaker 1:People will often like podcast or listen to an audiobook, and we're just that they're not getting the full benefit when they decide to do it that way because it takes them out of the moment. A lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like the idea of just like, yeah, exactly Like just being in this, whether it's leaving the like an unplugged walk, ultimately is what it comes down to. Yeah, you know, and I think that sometimes you see that where it's like, okay, you're on your phone, texting, but you're missing the moment. Right, you're missing the moment, but that's ultimately it Like, if it's, if it's truly to be able to de-stress, it's different if you're going out for some quiet time or some privacy whatever the case is, do what you got to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, but if it's like a de-stress end of the day, I had enough that I brought in I want to take out and release that stress. I would definitely go for an unplugged walk in nature no-transcript.
Speaker 1:And I'm laying in bed and my heart is racing and my mind keeps wanting and I'm trying not to think about the thing, cause I'm like I've got it sorted, I don't need any more problem solving on this. I know what I'm going to do, but I'm very, very stressed and my mind just was like this little magnet to every possible worry. Now I'm worried about my kids. Now I'm worried about my husband, I'm worried about work, I'm worried about all these things. I'm related to the big thing because I'm trying not to think about the big thing and all these problems feel huge. They feel huge. They feel like really, really big deals.
Speaker 1:I wake up the next morning I'm like, again, I have the stressful thing to do today, so I'm going to go to the gym. I get on the treadmill, I'm like I'm going to try something. I'm going to try thinking about those stressful, other stressful things that kept popping in my head, feeling like the end of the world while I'm running. I love it. And I was like do these feel like the end of the world while I'm running? They did not. That's the trick. They did not feel like. They all felt like problems I could solve. Because now, all of a sudden, my heart beating really, really fast had a different context to it, which is I am running. So my brain was not interpreting that fast heartbeat with a problem that it needed to find a solution to, and cycle on and do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:And so that was that moment for me that I'm like it makes a really, really big difference the context in which your body is doing something. So for me, when it comes to recommendation for clients, when they do notice that their anxiety comes with a very, very fast heart rate, I'm like you start some jumping jacks, you start some squats, something that is going to naturally raise an intense like increase that heart rate. You're going to start noticing that your mind starts changing and the thoughts that feel like the end of the world and feel like a big deal actually start feeling more manageable, more reasonable. I can keep that thinking part of my brain more intact. I love that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's almost like mimicking it, but in a different context. In a different context, my heart rate is increasing anyways as I'm thinking about this stressful thing. Yeah, but it feels maladaptive. Whereas I'm on the treadmill, my heart is still. My heart rate is still up, yeah, but it's a different context and it feels much different and healthier in a lot of ways too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the emotion shifted. That's what's so crazy the whole emotion around the same thought shifted entirely from oh my God, this is the end of the world to like. Oh no, I got this.
Speaker 2:I got it figured out.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of cardio and I noticed a difference. I noticed a difference in a week in which I have exerted myself cardio wise or a week that I haven't, for whatever reason. So yeah, big fan of cardio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, and that's why it's often said like you want to deal with the stress before the stressor, right, and so it's like the stress is essentially how my body is responding, how my body is dealing with this stressor, whatever the stressor is. But how am I dealing with it? Physiologically, right, Emotionally, cognitively, what is my perception? How am I interpreting it? How's my body responding to this? But how do I deal with that piece? First, yeah, and then that gives me more space to now, you know, ensure that I've done what I needed to do to mitigate the stressor itself. Yeah, I think that's the idea of like separating the two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just sparked a thought that I just had, which we also see all the time.
Speaker 1:How many times do we see people who want to, who basically end up in a chronic stressor because they're so worried about the acute stress they would need to go under to stop it?
Speaker 1:So that is, my partner is doing something that is very upsetting to me and it's chronically frustrating and irritating me, but I don't want to have the possible fight, I don't want to have the conversation, because I don't want to have the conversation which would be the acute stressor I sit in, this chronic stress. This is why we do in so many different ways. We need to actually reverse the way that we think about acute stress, which is like a short-term, intense moment, versus this like prolonged stress, and I think we we ended up having that conversation with a lot of people when they're like, oh no, I don't want to address that, I don't, I don't want to talk about, I don't want to to actually bring that to because it's going to cause a fight and all this kind of stuff and it's going. I get that. I understand why that's really uncomfortable and let's talk about how to maybe address it so it doesn't start a big fight.
Speaker 2:But it can make things so much easier.
Speaker 1:You're going to be in misery the whole time until you actually do deal with it. Same with quitting a job. There's so many different things that I'll just deal with that chronic stress instead of risking acute stress.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So just deal with the elephant, just deal with the issue that's at hand, because otherwise that's going to have a ripple effect onto the other pieces there. But again, that sometimes can be stressful, especially if you don't have the skills or the tools to like, assert yourself or to assert your wishes, or the emotions are in high drive yeah you know, and that becomes the driving force of the conversation, where it feels more emotionally driven versus like addressing.
Speaker 2:okay, what does this mean to me? Why is this a problem or why is this a concern for me? Because then that ends up also kind of like creating the scene that you didn't want to create, which is oh, that's the yeah, that's yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:I let the chronic stress go on for so long that when the acute stress finally comes, it is way bigger than it needed to be as I just addressed it when I wasn't feeling this heated about it.
Speaker 1:Especially, we have a lot of people are like I'm very I, it's not anti, it's um confrontational or conflict. Uh, adverse conflict, conflict, diverse, yes, but there's people. People always say that I avoid no, not, I avoid conflict, though I am non-confrontational. There it is. I am non-confrontational, there it is okay, I am non-confrontational. Almost every person that's ever told me they're non-confrontational. My reaction is often like that's not my experience.
Speaker 1:My experience is, whenever you do talk about like when, whenever a confrontation happens, like you do, come at it from this very confrontational way. But the reason why you identify as non-confrontational because you let it bother you for so long, and I've seen people do this where they'll say you know, this thing happened and I let it go and then and then this thing happened, then I let it go and then finally they did this other thing and I blew up at them and I'm going you never let it go. Actually, you shoved it down and now it's blowing up and very non-confrontational. People don't realize that that's what they're often doing, is they're actually shoving down the stress until it can't be shoved down any further, and then it comes to the surface and then they hate that.
Speaker 1:They always hate that. They're like I'm not proud of what I said, I'm not proud of what I did. Um, now, I hate confrontation even more and I like to turn to is carefrontation. Can we get into like carefrontation and said and I like to turn to is carefrontation? Can we get into like carefrontation instead, where I'm in a position where I can address this with you in a calm, demeanor and a caring, and I'm telling it to you because I care about our relationship, right, and I want us to have better communication, I want us to have a good thing here. So this is why I'm bringing it to your attention. So it doesn't have to be confrontational, it doesn't have to get to that level. So it doesn't have to be confrontational, it doesn't have to get to that level, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's the idea right. It's like if I don't want to have this confrontation because I don't want it to be explosive, but then that ends up being the outcome that you've created, Almost entirely every time it could have been avoided.
Speaker 1:It could have been avoided, okay. Well, that was myth number one. I think we're going to do myth number two. Yes, so myth number two is that you cannot be successful if you struggle with your mental health.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think, that's such a I mean, yeah, absolutely a myth for so many reasons, right, when we think about some of the most successful high achieving people out there, there are some elements of mental health at play. You're thinking about the one in five, right? I mean it's inevitable that someone who is high achieving doesn't have something mental health related whether it's depression or anxiety or ADHD or stage fright, right?
Speaker 2:Just performance anxiety or whatever the case might be, or social anxiety, right? Lots of people out there may not want to engage in those, and I think of the same ideas, like we often like to look at to mental health in the same light as like physical health, right, like that's almost important myth for folks to understand whether they themselves are experiencing mental health challenges, or even how they view others. It's like that, doesn't? That's not a factor?
Speaker 1:No, If anything, actually funny enough, we've seen the inverse be true and that because of the mental health struggle, it has influenced their success very positively. Yeah, of the mental health struggle, it has influenced their success very positively. Yeah, um, if you actually look, if you read biographies and you read the biographies of some of the most like spectacular people on the planet, the amount of trauma they may have experienced, the amount of like mood, yeah, disorders sort of happening throughout some of our I mean actually what's really I don't know. What makes me actually really really sad is like comedy and comedians or actors as well to how many of them have such severe depression?
Speaker 1:It's usually depression, but you see, the ones with things they tell I mean, some of the some of the funniest comics are the ones when they're telling about their anxiety and how it like comes out for them. I know Because it's so relatable. Exactly, it's really relatable and they're very, very successful, yet Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So a lot of ways they use that as fuel. Right, they use it as fuel, they use it as a stepping stone. They use it as there's a lot of resilience that they've been able to drive from their mental health experiences that helps to push them into these high achieving roles. It's recognizing like I can actually use this um in an adaptive way. Yeah, you know, and to not allow this to become a barrier um, but how do I use this as? How do I show my resilience through this experience?
Speaker 1:yeah, and I think that we have to dispel this myth. So it's so much more important right now. I feel like to dispel this myth because the youth are having such severe mental health crisis right now, and if they believe that they are not going to be able to be successful in life due to what they're going through right now with their mental health, that is going to because we know the strength of beliefs. I was listening to a book recently and I was just like it was such a fan phenomenal way of describing how beliefs work. And, yeah, this concept and we see it all the time in therapy right, where somebody will recognize that, um, maybe something isn't true, right? So let's say, they'll say I know that I am, uh, effective at work, I know that my boss tells me that I'm really good at work, I get a lot of positive feedback from my clients, that type of stuff but I believe myself not good enough and no matter how much we talk about how that belief is not consistent with the facts, I actually can't change that belief because I want to. I can't just decide oh, I'm not going to believe that anymore, right? And so our belief that my mental health is going to be a barrier to me if I believe it.
Speaker 1:There's that saying and I'm terrible at the details, but there's that saying if you believe you can or you cannot, you are correct. Our beliefs are really really powerful. So that's why, for us, myth-busting is really really important, because we have to understand mental health struggles is just almost like stress. We have to accept that that's just kind of part of being human and that we have to learn how to manage it. We have to learn how to overcome it. We have to learn the tools, the strategies, that type of stuff to to get to the other side of it, so it doesn't limit us.
Speaker 2:Exactly that's a key part, I think it's acknowledging it and also seeking support for it. Yeah, it's one thing where you're sort of like acknowledging it and also seeking support for it. Yeah, it's one thing where you're sort of like you also are now internalizing the stigma, yeah, and you're not ignoring it or acknowledging it for being what it is, or you're dismissing your own experiences, your own symptoms. Yeah, it might show up in different ways. Yeah, you know, whereas if it's like again back to physical injury, if I'm actually going to physio, if I'm actually doing the work, if I'm actually improving in those ways, I'll see my performance be different. And so that's a really good point in terms of like, there has to be a level of like, self acknowledgement as well too, and not internalizing the stigmas, not allowing the stigmas of others to become how you now interpret your own experiences. But that's another. I think a key component is like, what is it that I'm saying to myself about this?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Especially and I think it always breaks my heart when someone says it's just how. This is just how I am right, I am just a worrier or I am just a catastrophizer, that's just how I am. And I'm always like I mean, that's how you're well-practiced. It comes really easy. It's very effortless to be that way, but that doesn't actually. That's not actually just who you are. That, but that doesn't actually. That's not actually just who you are Exactly. That actually is adjustable with practice doing something different. There's ways to shift that narrative Absolutely and it can become a strength instead of a weakness is your ability to actually even like catastrophizers, if you can harness that and actually just be really good at assessing the downside and then protecting against the downside.
Speaker 1:But the problem is with catastrophizing when it's coming from that anxious state is I can even say what if I don't know what if my house floods, and so I get flood insurance and I also get a plumber in to make sure all my pipes are good and I do all of that. Well, a catastrophizer is going to still be like. Well, I'm still worried about it, though. Right Cause they haven't, instead of actually just recognizing OK, I've solved the problem, I don't have to worry about this anymore. Right it just, it still is yeah.
Speaker 2:It still remains an issue. Yeah, yeah, but I acknowledge what I think is helpful just in realizing the role that I play in this Right. How is it that I can turn this small hill into a mountain?
Speaker 1:Yeah, or a snowball that keeps on building and building and building Right. Yeah, so it's definitely not a barrier. At all and what we see a lot of times is it actually can be quite a strength, or even just learning how to overcome. It is the strength in and of itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, work with it, yeah, work with it, as opposed to kind of like fighting a gangster, pushing a gangster, but we kind of ride the wave of it. Good, well, that was good. I hope that you guys um enjoyed our discussion around this and keep the myths coming. Keep the questions coming as well. If you have any myths that you want us to clarify or questions, please email us at media at the mindbarca. Look forward to our next conversation with you. Thanks, take care.
