Why exactly is stress bad for us?
It’s a response our body produces to perceived threats.
Another term for stress is the “fight or flight syndrome,” which puts our body on high alert and releases adrenalin into our blood stream.
We feel stress when we are under pressure, whether it’s being late to appointment because of traffic or dealing with an unreasonable boss.
To be healthy, it’s important recognize when an event is stressful yet not let it trigger an automatic response that can send blood pressure soaring.
One technique that’s been proven to be effective is called “mindfulness-based” stress reduction.
It’s a means of perceiving that a situation is stressful but being in control of our reaction so we’re not producing “fight or flight” hormones automatically.
To learn more about managing the stress in your life, listen to a podcast by Summit Medical Group’s Nicole Swain, a professional counselor and expert on anxiety. She will take you through the steps you need to achieve calm in the face of stressful situations.
Selected Podcast
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Featured Speaker:
Nicole D. Swain
Nicole D. Swain, provides counseling services to individuals and couples. Her expertise includes anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobias, adjustment disorders, stress, insomnia, depression, mood disorders, and grief. In addition to her position at Summit Medical Group, Ms. Swain provides training and consultation for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-University Behavioral Health Care in Piscataway. Transcription:
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Melanie Cole (Host): Why exactly is stress bad for us? It’s response our body produces to perceived threats. Another term for stress is the fight or flight syndrome, which puts our body on high alert and releases adrenaline into our bloodstream. We feel that stress when we’re under pressure, whether it’s being late to an appointment, or traffic or dealing with unreasonable bus or sadness and loss. To be healthy though, it’s important to recognize when an event is stressful yet not to let it trigger that automatic response that can send blood pressure soaring. My guest today is Nicole Swain. She provides counseling services to individuals and couples at Summit Medical Group. Welcome to the show, Nicole. Tell us a little bit about stress and the havoc that it can truly wreak on our bodies, our physical bodies from that psychological stress.
Nicole Swain (Guest): Stress is something that all people experience, and so it is a normal experience for most people. Stress can become detrimental over time when it’s not well managed. The way it does that is by producing cortisol, which is a hormone in our body that is produced specifically when we experience a situation or event that’s stressful and we react to that situation and event rather than respond to it. Through strategies like mindfulness-based stress reduction, we can teach people to respond to stress and cope with situations and events in a more effective way so it doesn’t negatively impact them.
Melanie: What is mindfulness-based stress reduction? How does that help us? Because especially women, we feel this stress all the time. We’re so busy. We take care of so many people. How can this help us to kind of let that all go, take those breaths, and feel less stressed?
Nicole: Mindfulness-based stress reduction is actually something that was developed back in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness and has become an evidence-based practice. Primarily, it helps by having people pay attention on purpose, moment by moment, with non-judgmental awareness. Slowing people down to be in the present moment instead of engaged in what we would refer to as rehashing and rehearsing—rehashing being focusing on the past, or rehearsing, focusing on things that have not yet happened—tend to increase our stress level. Teaching people to be present to the moment and how they are thinking about situations at the moment or experiencing emotions or sensations in the moment can help people respond more effectively to stress.
Melanie: Tell us a little bit about what that involves. People hear mindfulness-based stress reduction and they think Eastern type medicine, yoga, meditation, that sort of thing. Is that what it is, it teaches you to meditate and take yourself out of that situation?
Nicole: Mindfulness-based stress reduction is more secular, nonreligious, nonspiritual-based, although there are practices in it that are based in some Buddhist practices. It is not a religion, and it’s not a spiritual modality that people practice. Instead, it is a practice where we teach people strategies and skills of what’s called formal and informal mindfulness. Informal mindfulness, we do teach people specific meditation practices, and these meditation practices do take the form of strategies, do take protective time for people to practice every day. We also teach informal practice. In an informal practice, you can weave mindfulness, which is paying attention on purpose moment by moment into your everyday activities as simply as driving a car, brushing your teeth, or taking a shower in the morning. It is important to delineate between mindfulness-based stress reduction, meditation, and other forms of meditation. In MBSR, we teach what’s called insight meditation. Insight meditation is taught for the purpose of paying attention to what is happening in the moment without any effort to change what is happening at the moment, versus concentration meditation, which is usually related to spiritual types of meditation. Those are to help people focus on chakras or a prayer or a mantra with the focus of emptying the mind or on the mantra itself. We would say that it’s tuning in to something very specific versus in mindfulness-based stress reduction, we’re turning in to ourselves.
Melanie: MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction. Does that help people to problem solve? If you’re moment by moment and your awareness is what you’re working on, being fully awake in the moment, does it help you to come up with solutions to these problems? Does it help you to think things out more clearly?
Nicole: I do believe it helps you to think things more clearly because you’re thinking things as they are happening and in the moment first is writing a story about how it might go in the future or how it went in the past. And so what it does teach you is to get out of the habit of jumping to conclusions based on your past experiences or future worries and instead create space in the present moment between stimulus and response, make a choice about how to respond to situations and events in a more helpful way.
Melanie: Do you work with individuals, with couples, with groups? Is this something that you do by yourself, and is it something that you have to do when you’re working with someone such as yourself? Or is it something that you can utilize these techniques at home when you’re feeling that stress?
Nicole: Generally, the modalities for MBSR is a group modality, so people participate in an eight-week class where they learn the strategies and skills and practice these strategies and skills. And in between every week of meeting in class, they’re practicing their skills seven days a week. I have taught it in individual modality, although its greater benefit is in group modality. Mindfulness-based stress reduction practitioners also are people who have been specifically trained in delivering MBSR but also practice MBSR and practice both formal and informal meditation and mindfulness on a daily basis. So I kind of compare it to it’s very difficult to teach somebody how to climb a mountain if you’ve never climbed a mountain, and so MBSR practitioners are not just people who are teachers but also people who are practicing the strategies themselves and can speak to their benefit specifically to the class members who are participating.
Melanie: How effective, Nicole, is MBSR? Can it help people to really reduce their stress or sleep better or help ease depression or chronic pain? How effective is it?
Nicole: It is actually very highly effective at treating a multitude of different types of physical illnesses such as chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue disorder, as well as chronic psychiatric conditions such as major depressive disorder, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder. And the effectiveness, thankfully to Jon Kabat-Zinn, has been proven since 1979 through multiple randomized control trials which have repeatedly demonstrated by teaching people the skills and by people practicing these skills they developed new neural pathways in their brain which are reinforced positively by the practice of meditation and mindfulness to a degree that they can reverse the effects of these other conditions that have primarily harmed them over time.
Melanie: If you had to give your best advice for someone for stress reduction, to ease the stress that we all feel so often on a daily basis, what would you tell them that they could do aside from this group therapy to something that they could do at home to help reduce their stress?
Nicole: Really, a kind of basic tenet would be to schedule very brief check-ins with themselves, perhaps two to three times a day. This would be maybe three minutes where they would stop what they’re doing and sit down and take the time to kind of check in in what they’re thinking and what they’re emotionally experiencing and any sensations in their body at the time and inquire as to how they’re judging those thoughts, emotions, and sensations and creating some space between the thought sensations, emotions, and how they are experiencing themselves. The three minutes can kind of reboot ourselves to start off on a new foot for the rest of the day.
Melanie: That’s great information. Do you have one last bit of information that you could tell for people who question whether or not this works?
Nicole: I guess the information I would give with regard to whether or not this works goes back to more than 20,000 people at the MBSR Center for Mindfulness who go in have been helped in reducing chronic illness symptoms through learning these strategies and skills and practicing these strategies and skills by reducing those reactions they’re having to situations and events and interact with situations and events in a more productive way.
Melanie: Thank you so much. And for more information on mindfulness-based stress reduction, you can to summitmedicalgroup.com. That’s summitmedicalgroup.com. You’re listening to SMG Radio. I’m Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Melanie Cole (Host): Why exactly is stress bad for us? It’s response our body produces to perceived threats. Another term for stress is the fight or flight syndrome, which puts our body on high alert and releases adrenaline into our bloodstream. We feel that stress when we’re under pressure, whether it’s being late to an appointment, or traffic or dealing with unreasonable bus or sadness and loss. To be healthy though, it’s important to recognize when an event is stressful yet not to let it trigger that automatic response that can send blood pressure soaring. My guest today is Nicole Swain. She provides counseling services to individuals and couples at Summit Medical Group. Welcome to the show, Nicole. Tell us a little bit about stress and the havoc that it can truly wreak on our bodies, our physical bodies from that psychological stress.
Nicole Swain (Guest): Stress is something that all people experience, and so it is a normal experience for most people. Stress can become detrimental over time when it’s not well managed. The way it does that is by producing cortisol, which is a hormone in our body that is produced specifically when we experience a situation or event that’s stressful and we react to that situation and event rather than respond to it. Through strategies like mindfulness-based stress reduction, we can teach people to respond to stress and cope with situations and events in a more effective way so it doesn’t negatively impact them.
Melanie: What is mindfulness-based stress reduction? How does that help us? Because especially women, we feel this stress all the time. We’re so busy. We take care of so many people. How can this help us to kind of let that all go, take those breaths, and feel less stressed?
Nicole: Mindfulness-based stress reduction is actually something that was developed back in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness and has become an evidence-based practice. Primarily, it helps by having people pay attention on purpose, moment by moment, with non-judgmental awareness. Slowing people down to be in the present moment instead of engaged in what we would refer to as rehashing and rehearsing—rehashing being focusing on the past, or rehearsing, focusing on things that have not yet happened—tend to increase our stress level. Teaching people to be present to the moment and how they are thinking about situations at the moment or experiencing emotions or sensations in the moment can help people respond more effectively to stress.
Melanie: Tell us a little bit about what that involves. People hear mindfulness-based stress reduction and they think Eastern type medicine, yoga, meditation, that sort of thing. Is that what it is, it teaches you to meditate and take yourself out of that situation?
Nicole: Mindfulness-based stress reduction is more secular, nonreligious, nonspiritual-based, although there are practices in it that are based in some Buddhist practices. It is not a religion, and it’s not a spiritual modality that people practice. Instead, it is a practice where we teach people strategies and skills of what’s called formal and informal mindfulness. Informal mindfulness, we do teach people specific meditation practices, and these meditation practices do take the form of strategies, do take protective time for people to practice every day. We also teach informal practice. In an informal practice, you can weave mindfulness, which is paying attention on purpose moment by moment into your everyday activities as simply as driving a car, brushing your teeth, or taking a shower in the morning. It is important to delineate between mindfulness-based stress reduction, meditation, and other forms of meditation. In MBSR, we teach what’s called insight meditation. Insight meditation is taught for the purpose of paying attention to what is happening in the moment without any effort to change what is happening at the moment, versus concentration meditation, which is usually related to spiritual types of meditation. Those are to help people focus on chakras or a prayer or a mantra with the focus of emptying the mind or on the mantra itself. We would say that it’s tuning in to something very specific versus in mindfulness-based stress reduction, we’re turning in to ourselves.
Melanie: MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction. Does that help people to problem solve? If you’re moment by moment and your awareness is what you’re working on, being fully awake in the moment, does it help you to come up with solutions to these problems? Does it help you to think things out more clearly?
Nicole: I do believe it helps you to think things more clearly because you’re thinking things as they are happening and in the moment first is writing a story about how it might go in the future or how it went in the past. And so what it does teach you is to get out of the habit of jumping to conclusions based on your past experiences or future worries and instead create space in the present moment between stimulus and response, make a choice about how to respond to situations and events in a more helpful way.
Melanie: Do you work with individuals, with couples, with groups? Is this something that you do by yourself, and is it something that you have to do when you’re working with someone such as yourself? Or is it something that you can utilize these techniques at home when you’re feeling that stress?
Nicole: Generally, the modalities for MBSR is a group modality, so people participate in an eight-week class where they learn the strategies and skills and practice these strategies and skills. And in between every week of meeting in class, they’re practicing their skills seven days a week. I have taught it in individual modality, although its greater benefit is in group modality. Mindfulness-based stress reduction practitioners also are people who have been specifically trained in delivering MBSR but also practice MBSR and practice both formal and informal meditation and mindfulness on a daily basis. So I kind of compare it to it’s very difficult to teach somebody how to climb a mountain if you’ve never climbed a mountain, and so MBSR practitioners are not just people who are teachers but also people who are practicing the strategies themselves and can speak to their benefit specifically to the class members who are participating.
Melanie: How effective, Nicole, is MBSR? Can it help people to really reduce their stress or sleep better or help ease depression or chronic pain? How effective is it?
Nicole: It is actually very highly effective at treating a multitude of different types of physical illnesses such as chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue disorder, as well as chronic psychiatric conditions such as major depressive disorder, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder. And the effectiveness, thankfully to Jon Kabat-Zinn, has been proven since 1979 through multiple randomized control trials which have repeatedly demonstrated by teaching people the skills and by people practicing these skills they developed new neural pathways in their brain which are reinforced positively by the practice of meditation and mindfulness to a degree that they can reverse the effects of these other conditions that have primarily harmed them over time.
Melanie: If you had to give your best advice for someone for stress reduction, to ease the stress that we all feel so often on a daily basis, what would you tell them that they could do aside from this group therapy to something that they could do at home to help reduce their stress?
Nicole: Really, a kind of basic tenet would be to schedule very brief check-ins with themselves, perhaps two to three times a day. This would be maybe three minutes where they would stop what they’re doing and sit down and take the time to kind of check in in what they’re thinking and what they’re emotionally experiencing and any sensations in their body at the time and inquire as to how they’re judging those thoughts, emotions, and sensations and creating some space between the thought sensations, emotions, and how they are experiencing themselves. The three minutes can kind of reboot ourselves to start off on a new foot for the rest of the day.
Melanie: That’s great information. Do you have one last bit of information that you could tell for people who question whether or not this works?
Nicole: I guess the information I would give with regard to whether or not this works goes back to more than 20,000 people at the MBSR Center for Mindfulness who go in have been helped in reducing chronic illness symptoms through learning these strategies and skills and practicing these strategies and skills by reducing those reactions they’re having to situations and events and interact with situations and events in a more productive way.
Melanie: Thank you so much. And for more information on mindfulness-based stress reduction, you can to summitmedicalgroup.com. That’s summitmedicalgroup.com. You’re listening to SMG Radio. I’m Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.