Stress is on the rise. According to global research site Gallup, Americans are more stressed today than 30 years ago, with 49% recently reporting that they experience stress frequently.
High blood pressure, heart disease, strokes and obesity are among the many negative side effects associated with continued experiences of stress, which is why Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, physician and author of The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience, wants you to know that you’re not alone—and that it’s possible to rewire your brain’s response to mental tension.
Don’t believe the resilience myth
Nerurkar got into the stress and mental health field because she wanted to be the doctor she needed during a difficult time.
“I was taught at an early stage of my medical training that pressure makes diamonds,” says Nerurkar. “Working 80 hours a week, I would say to myself whenever there was a difficult moment, ‘Hey, I’m a diamond in the making.’ Then my diamond cracked.”
Nerurkar was feeling the full force of burnout and finally decided to visit her doctor after suffering repetitive heart palpitations.
“I was told it was just stress and to try and relax. My first reaction was, ‘Stress? Stress doesn’t happen to people like me.’”
Nerurkar was living the toxic resilience myth, something which many countries have ingrained in their culture, from England’s “Keep Calm & Carry On” war slogan to Japan’s “karoshi” syndrome (death resulting from overwork and excessive occupational stress).
“We’ve been taught from a very young age that we have to tolerate large amounts of discomfort because that’s what it means to be resilient, but it’s a toxic resilience that we’re embodying rather than true resilience,” she says. “If you’re noticing small whispers of things happening in your body that don’t feel right, go see your doctor and manage your stress early.”
Be grateful for what you have
Yoga and running are great for managing stress, but Nerurkar explains that we can practice a few simpler methods to alleviate tension. “Gratitude is a very effective practice to reset burnout,” she reveals. “Every morning or night, for 60 seconds, write down five things you’re grateful for. Some days you’ll have more than five things, other days you may only have one. Be grateful for two arms and two legs, a roof over your head, a pantry with food. These are things that many people don’t have the ability or the luxury of having.”
It sounds so easy, but a complex psychological technique is at play here. “The reason it’s so important to write down what you’re grateful for every day rather than type it is because your brain uses a different neural circuitry to write versus type,” she says. “A written gratitude practice at 30, 60 and 90 days has demonstrated effects in managing stress and resilience because what you focus on grows.”
Breathe in…and out
Every day we take around 20,000 breaths; we do it without even thinking about it. But Dr. Nerurkar explains that taking the time to concentrate on your breath can put your mind at ease. “The reason your breath is such a great step in understanding, tapping into and influencing your mind-body connection is because it is the only physiological process in your body under voluntary and involuntary control,” she says. “No matter what you’re doing, you’re going to stop, take a beat and pause. Next, take a deep breath in and out. Keeping your feet on the floor, you’re going to ground yourself in the present moment.
“When you’re feeling a sense of stress and burnout, you’re often feeling anxious and anxiety is a future-focused emotion. You are on that runaway train of what if thinking, what if this doesn’t go well? What if I fail? What if it’s a disaster? ‘Stop, breathe and be’ gets you out of that, bringing you back to the present moment.”
We spoke to Dr. Aditi Nerurkar for The Science of Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Berk’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series.
DR. ADITI NERURKAR: Stress is a force that is all around us like gravity. It's a part of our lives and it's inescapable. There are so many societal perceptions of what stress is and burnout is and how we are supposed to behave, that we often don't feel a sense of openness in sharing our own struggles, vulnerabilities, or weaknesses. But understand that underneath it all, you are not alone, it is not your fault, and likely, many other people are feeling just like you.
I noticed it when I was a clinician in Boston seeing patients in a packed waiting room. No one speaks to each other, but those same patients would come into my exam room, the door would close, and they would burst into tears because of the stigma and taboo about stress and burnout. The goal of life is not to live a life with zero stress; it's in fact biologically impossible to do this. It's to live a life with healthy, manageable stress, so stress can serve you rather than harm you.
I'm Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, a Harvard physician with an expertise in stress, burnout, mental health, and resilience, and the author of "The Five Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience." I became an expert on stress and burnout because I wanted to become the doctor I needed during a difficult time. I was a medical resident in my second year of medical residency. I was taking care of everyone else's hearts but not my own in that cardiac ICU. My head would hit the pillow, I'd be exhausted from a long day's work, and I would suddenly have the stampede of wild horses across my chest, and it continued to happen. My doctor did the full medical workup and everything checked out normal. And so my doctor very reassuringly with a big smile, said, "Everything's great. It's probably just stress. We've all been there. Just try to relax." My first reaction was, "Stress? Stress doesn't happen to people like me. I'm resilient," because I was living the resilience myth as many people are. I was taught at a very young stage of my medical training that pressure makes diamonds, and so as I was moving through medical training working 80 hours a week, I would say to myself whenever there was a difficult moment, "Hey, I'm a diamond in the making." And then my diamond cracked, and the resilience myth is that resilient people don't get burned out and don't feel a sense of stress. But in fact, true resilience also honors your boundaries and human limitations. It honors your ability to say no, and it uses a lens of self-compassion.
And so I was living the resilience myth because I didn't know any better. And then when I found my way out of stress, that is when I said, "I wanna be the doctor I wish I had back during that difficult time."
Not all stress is created equal. In fact, there are two kinds of stress. There is healthy, productive stress in scientific terms we say that that is 'adaptive stress.' Getting a new job or a promotion, falling in love. Healthy stress moves your life forward. But when stress goes unchecked and is untamed, dysfunctional and unproductive, that's when stress goes from being adaptive to maladaptive. And those two are very different when it comes to how they impact your brain and your body.
Under normal circumstances, our brain is led by the prefrontal cortex. That's this area right behind your forehead and that area, the prefrontal cortex, governs things like memory, planning, organization, forward strategic thinking. But under periods of stress, your brain is governed by the amygdala, and your amygdala is focused on survival and self-preservation or your fight or flight response. Think back to when we were all cave people: You would be in the forest and you would see a tiger. You could either fight the tiger or you could flee. The challenge now is that all of the tigers that we have in the modern day are ongoing and chronic. Bills, relationship constraints, job constraints, or parenting. All of these metaphorical tigers in the modern day make your stress response and the amygdala on in the background at a low hum, chronically.
During stress, your inner critic gets a megaphone. Those negative experiences are sticky in the brain like Velcro. Your brain grabs onto those because it's a sense of hypervigilance and your body and brain are trying to keep you safe. And so often there's this tension between that inner critic and that sense of self-agency and self-efficacy. You want to be able to do new, important, exciting things in your life, and when you reset your stress, you can take that megaphone out of your inner critic's hand. There are so many false perceptions about ways that stress can influence you. Unhealthy maladaptive stress can feel like a sense of constraint on the mind because you are living in a scarcity mindset. So think about that as you're moving through your day and moving in the world, that likely the same amount of good and bad is happening at all times. The goal with resetting your stress is to make negative experiences less sticky, moving away from Velcro to Teflon.
If you are feeling a sense of stress and burnout, if that inner critic is relentless in your ear, understand that first you are not alone and it is not your fault. There is robust data to show that early childhood experiences, particularly adverse events in childhood, can influence your stress response throughout your life into adulthood. But it's also important to understand the science of the brain. We used to think that your brain, what you had at birth is what you have for life - it was like a real grab bag - but now we are learning that your brain in fact changes, grows, and adapts based on life's circumstances, situations, and stimulation. And through the process of 'neuroplasticity,' your brain is constantly regenerating brain cells and circuits. So if you have had a difficult childhood experience, if you've experienced trauma and you do have an influence on your stress response, you can over time with patience and practice, create a new neural pathway for managing your stress and burnout.
It is a misconception to think that to decrease your stress and burnout, you need to revamp your whole life. So how can you reset your stress and burnout in the here and now in the middle of your messy, over-scheduled, and stressful life? Let's start with these two resets: The first is a breathing exercise and the second is gratitude. The reason your breath is such a great first step is because your breath is the only physiological process in the body that is under both voluntary and involuntary control. So you can use your breath as a way to tap into your mind-body connection to understand it, and then later influence it to serve you. This is a three-second exercise. Stop, breathe, and be. The instructions are in the name. The first thing you're gonna do is no matter what you're doing, you're just gonna stop. Take a beat and take a pause. Next, you're going to breathe. Take a deep breath in and out, and then you're going to be. Just ground yourself in the here and now in the present moment.
When you are feeling a sense of stress and burnout, you're often feeling anxious, and anxiety is a future-focused emotion. You are on that runaway train of what if thinking. What if this doesn't go well? What if I fail? What if it's a disaster? It's all of this doom and gloom thinking. And stop, breathe, be gets you out of that what if thinking back to what is - in the here and now in the present moment.
Gratitude is also a very effective practice. What you wanna do is you wanna write down five things you're grateful for and why. The reason gratitude is so important in reframing your stress and burnout is because it focuses on a scientific principle called 'cognitive reframing.' What you focus on grows. A written gratitude practice at 30, 60, and 90 days has shown to have demonstrated effects in managing your stress, burnout, mood, and resilience. So often when we are feeling a sense of stress, overwhelm, and burnout, there are things in our external world that are happening that are out of our control, and so we often end up feeling powerless. Learning how to manage your stress is a skill just like riding a bike; it's not an innate thing that we are born with. It is something that you can teach your brain to do, and it is something that you can teach yourself to do. You can rewire your brain and body for less stress and more resilience.
