Ep038: Find HOPE under uncontrollable stress--with Dr. Gilbert

deepintosleep.co

Dr. Elizabeth Gilbert

with Dr. Yishan Xu

 

TODAY’S GUEST

Elizabeth Gilbert, Ph.D., J.D., is a psychologist with expertise in sense-making, decision-making, and well-being. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Virginia and she completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina in the department of Addiction Sciences studying trauma recovery and substance abuse. She also holds a law degree from Duke University and keeps an eye towards how legal policy intersects with psychology and neuroscience. Her current work is particularly relevant to business people, leaders, and other knowledge-workers. 

She is currently Head of Research at PsychologyCompass.com — a fully-automated coach that helps knowledge-workers reach their peak mental performance. At PsychologyCompass she develops science-backed lessons to help people improve themselves, including topics ranging from self-control and goal attainment to sleep to happiness.

WHAT WILL WE LEARN

We all have our own psychological immune system.

How to regain our control over our lives: internally vs. externally?

  • Recognize what you are able to control, what you cannot, and redirect your attention and efforts accordingly.

  • Educating yourself and understanding what’s going on is related to increased sense of control.

  • Find the balance between knowing too much and not knowing at all.

What parents can do to help children to cope with environmental stress?

RESOURCES

Find more about Dr. Gilbert’s articles and blogs:

Thank You for Listening!

Newsletter and Download Free Sleep Guidence E-Book:

CBT-I Courses:

Podcast Links:

Transcript

- 0:00  

As a psychologist, one thing I do in my clinical work a lot is to help my clients identify the hope behind the hopeless reality. A lot of my clients really feel desperate, hopeless, and really stuck in their life. And sometime by processing it by discussing it, when we find their hope to recover, that our stress will reduce dramatically, then how to find hope right now under COVID-19 in stressful situations. Today we have Dr. Elizabeth Gilbert, a social psychologist. She will use her expertise to help us figure out the ins and outs of hope and their stressful situation. Welcome to deep into sleep. This is Asian. Let's hear what she can share with us.

- 1:09  

Hi, Liz, welcome to the show. Good morning Nishan

- 1:12  

It's so nice to be here and see you after all these years.

- 1:16  

I know old times, right?

- 1:20  

Yeah. So I know you are doing a lot of research, psychological research. Is that right?

- 1:27  

Yeah. So right now I'm working at a startup called psychology compass that basically tries to keep on top of research that's relevant to entrepreneurs and business people or anybody else who wants to be more productive and more, more happy, happier. So I'm kind of delving into all types of research these days and trying to write it up in a way that regular people like you and me Can, can learn from and maybe use to improve our lives.

- 2:00  

That's great. I think the general public really need to understand what researchers found, but in a way that they can understand and can really observe the information.

- 2:13  

Thank you. Hope we're doing that relatively well.

- 2:17  

That's a very important area of work. So I know you are a social psychologist, and right now we are all going through the pandemic, and we are all facing the challenge of Coronavirus. so in this situation, I feel like a lot of people like and at least I hear a lot of people feel so hopeless. They feel like this gonna last forever, or at least for the rest of the year. Life couldn't stay the same. There's no hope. And they got really depressed. Mm hmm. Yeah. So I'm wondering what do you think about that? Is that how you feel around you? there any research about that? Talking about it? Yeah. Um,

- 2:59  

so I I think you're onto something. I mean, this has been a huge event in most people's lives where your daily routine changed almost overnight. A lot of people might feel isolated if they're having to stay at home and not see people. So they're not getting the social connection that often leads to happiness and well being, they might be getting even less exercise less opportunity to go to social events or church services or other things in their life that they would usually turn to, to sort of bring them joy even just going out to dinner, you know. And so yeah, it's not surprising to me that a lot of people are feeling more depressed and anxious and down than normal. Maybe even having problems focusing on work if they have to work or sort of enjoying time with their family if they have family. And, you know, it's not just you and me saying this, there are several studies finding the exact same thing. Um, so One of the studies that's made a big splash over the last couple weeks is some work by Jeanne twing and her colleague finding that people are reporting anxiety and depression three or more times higher than they were before COVID symptoms like not enjoying

- 4:24  

things in their life as much or feeling stressed out.

- 4:30  

Other surveys like the US Census have found similar data or people's anxiety and depression scores increased after COVID and lockdown began. And a lot of that, I think has to do with people worrying like how long like you said, How long is this going to go on? How will I, you know, deal with having to homeschool my kids for another six months. Or, you know, missing my family or, or even worse, you know, worrying about their own or their loved ones safety from the virus or perhaps, you know, financial concerns. There's all sorts of just stress going on right now. But you talked a little bit about hope and the need for hope and I, I'm actually also seeing in the data,

- 5:25  

some

- 5:27  

good reason to have a little bit of hope about our resiliency.

- 5:33  

Um,

- 5:35  

so specifically, I'm even though there seemed to be really large hikes in stress, and depression, sort of right after the lockdown started and to the first couple weeks of April. Some of the more recent data is actually showing that on average, People are starting to return back to their baseline. So

- 6:06  

you know,

- 6:08  

they're not quite on average back to where they maybe were in February for their well being. But they're really starting to get that way they're one of the words I like to use is sort of the psychological immune system is starting to kick in for a lot of people we're we're beginning to feel a sense of normalcy and a sense of, alright, I can get through this like it stinks. But, but I can handle this maybe a little bit more than like a month ago.

- 6:38  

That's really good to know that human being we all have I really like the word psychological immune system. So we actually have our own resilience for a lot of people quite a lot of people possibly can. Got hit, and then bounce back after several months. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And will you talk about people really worry about The situation, I totally agree in the clinical setting, we do see people create more problem for ourselves internally, especially the sense of lack of control. And there's things that we cannot predict. Right. So things are not controllable, not predictable. That makes us more likely to experience anxiety to feel worried. Absolutely.

- 7:27  

I think we've been hardwired to, to want to be able to predict our worlds, right. I mean, we're lucky now that most of our life is taken care of, but our ancestors many, many millennia ago, needed to be able to predict where the Tigers were, right? Yeah. And, and so we have that need to sort of understand our world and right now, we're beginning to maybe start to understand it again. But it definitely

- 7:56  

was tough for a while and still can be tough. I mean, I We still don't know when this is all going to be over.

- 8:02  

Right? I feel like possibly no one can predict what's going to happen next step next month, even like several months, but for the control part, is that to really fully rely on the external world or is there a way for us as human beings to regain some of this sense of control? And there is this global epidemic?

- 8:28  

Absolutely, you are such a good clinician Isha. And of course, there are ways we can gain a sense of control. So, in psychology, we might talk about internal and external locus of controllers loci of control. And there are individual differences, right. So some people just generally feel like things are out of their hands. For better or worse. They don't control much other people kind of feel like they can control everything if they just put in enough effort. There might be cultural differences there too. I think Westerners in particular compared to maybe East Asian countries

- 9:05  

tend to believe that we can control everything.

- 9:13  

And so when something like this happens and suddenly we can't control things, it's it's particularly jarring perhaps. But, um, you know, we can learn ways regardless of your own sort of natural predisposition, we can learn some ways to sort of work with what we can and cannot control. You and I talked briefly once recently about just being able to identify, you know, what you can and cannot control can be really helpful.

- 9:44  

So, so there's this old

- 9:49  

it's called the Serenity Prayer and old saying, and

- 9:53  

in some circles, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. But that wisdom to know the difference can be really hard. Right? Right. But that is something you can sort of work on if you try to identify things like, you probably cannot control. You know what happens to the US economy, but maybe you can control a little bit about your own pocketbook, right? Perhaps you can start saving money just in case it goes on longer than than hoped. Maybe you could look into even getting an extra job just in case you're worried you might lose your current job. Maybe you could even you know, call the bank and see, Hey, can you delay some of my loans? I know that, at least here in the US, the government has done a few programs to sort of help people out. And educating yourself about the things you can control might help you regain some of that sense of control. And then Of course, there's some middle ground to I think, where maybe there are some things you cannot control per se, maybe you can't hundred percent control whether you get sex or you can wear a mask and take precautions to socially distance, but there's always a chance, right? Somebody's going to cough on you, or you're just gonna have bad luck and get sick. But you can control to a certain extent how you even respond to that, right? You can have a plan in place for what will happen if you get sick, or what will happen if you lose your job or have a big pay cut. And sometimes, just making those plans in advance even before the bad thing happens. Can can be helpful to alleviating some of that anxiety.

- 11:50  

Yes, yes. That's totally makes sense. And I really like that is no matter what consideration we are in, we possibly can ask Look inside look around us to figure out what are some steps actually we are able to do we possibly do have some options?

- 12:12  

Mm hmm. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you're always well, I don't want to say always, but you are often in control of your attitude, right. And I mean, as a social psychologist, I have to acknowledge the situation can make a huge difference in people's lives, right? You can be dealt a bad hand. Can I say crappy on your podcast? I'm not sure. But you can be delta really bad and bad luck just exists, right? sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes things are just out of your control.

- 12:45  

But you almost always can control how you respond to that bad luck, at least to a certain degree, right?

- 12:53  

Yeah, when we talk about controlled Is there any varieties among different populations And not necessarily ethnicity or across different countries, what can help us be aware of our control or our options more than other population?

- 13:12  

So there's actually an article that just came out. It's by a couple of researchers named Yangon Ma, who looked at well being in China right after Coronavirus. And what they found is like we were talking about, there's some factors that maybe are out of people's control, right. So, people who were closer to Wu Han, people who had more people in their lives, who got sick. Those people in general felt worse, they had lower they reported lower well being as you'd imagine, but even among those people, the ones who educated themselves about the virus more At least you felt like they understood the virus more they kept up on the research and they sort of knew what was happening around them who had that sense of just understanding. Those people were partially protected. Their anxiety scores and their depression scores were lower than people who really felt like they didn't understand any of what was going on. So that to me suggests that simply educating yourself, um, sort of knowing how things are working in what's going on out there can at least sometimes help you feel more in control. And I Oh, I shouldn't say they actually specifically linked that sense of understanding and education to feeling a sense of control, which in turn buffered those people and made those people feel a little less anxious, a little less depressed. So that's one possibility. And it sort of fits into what we were talking about before about, you know, regain the sense over what you can control it. Maybe You can't control whether your mother gets sick. But you can probably control whether you spend a little time doing research on how to you know, help your mother or what steps you can take to you know, prevent the disease as much as you can that kind of thing.

- 15:18  

Right? I know even after the COVID in China, there are several small books, booklets come out to talk about when one family member got sick, what are some strategies you can use to help the other family members leave within the same household or nearby from getting infected while you are taking care of that family member? So when you talk about that, I was thinking this is one method, right? If you look for those resources, and to try to apply those strategies, it's actually it's an option how you deal with a situation which can be helpful.

- 16:01  

Absolutely. And it's funny, I imagine those pamphlets were designed just to help with physical health, right? stop you from catching COVID. But I bet you're right that it also probably gave people a little bit of psychological peace to sort of feel like they they were doing the right thing and educating themselves to

- 16:19  

handle the situation as well as as possible.

- 16:22  

Right, exactly. Well, you mentioned that reminded me of a new paper coming out. Like this year, actually, after kool aid, and written by several psychologists across the world, I think it's more possibly clinical psychologists. But they are talking about this information knowledge, how much people want to know for information, like the pamphlet you just mentioned, sounds like if people are aware of it and can apply it, it possibly can help both physical and mental health, but they in their articles, they also talk about knowing Too much worse, not knowing but knowing how much information it can actually regulate our anxiety level feels like not knowing at all, but and knowing too much somehow it's not

- 17:15  

gonna find the sweet spot in the middle, right? Yeah. And that makes some sense to me, right? Because if you know a little bit, maybe that helps provide you a sense of control. But if you know a ton, it might mean that you're spending all your time thinking about COVID and researching COVID and that's probably not good either. Right? Like, you probably don't want to become obsessed with learning everything you can about this. I know I did that in the beginning and it was very bad for my mental health. It's been very good for me to sort of cut back on, on on the social information about it and then the research and sort of limit it to maybe an hour a day I'm allowed to read about it, but no more.

- 17:53  

Yeah, I totally agree. I think I heard a lot of people at the beginning. Include a lot of people I know Because you read so much and because there's so many mixed information plans real ones not so sure. And then people get insomnia people sleep got really bad. Yes.

- 18:13  

Oh yes. I think it was a turning point in my my ability to handle the pandemic when I made the decision that I would not look at the news right before bed. You know, your your, you know, the sleep research. I shouldn't be looking at the news, even in the best of times right before bed, but cutting it out. Really did allow my mind to calm down a bit.

- 18:37  

Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. Yeah, around that time. I also told a lot of people I think I even had episodes out talking about how to really contend those news reading information gathering during the very early stage of Kobe, which definitely cause a lot of problem because we all have the impulsivity and the fear and we want to know, we feel like kind of We feel like the more we know, the safer, we feel, but then it's just a rabbit hole. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I remember one concept is learn helplessness. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of people even myself before not Kobe's related, but you know what, I try so hard to do something, but somehow he doesn't get somewhere. And I feel like I drew all my resources. And then I would feel like, oh, I'll learn helpless right now. Yeah. Uh huh.

- 19:34  

Oh, I think that means you're human.

- 19:36  

I mean, yeah, learned helplessness. Classic finding, right. And in psychology. The basic finding there is that if you try really hard at something, work hard to get something and then you don't get it. And that happens a lot or you know, at least several times. Over time, you can begin to think oh, I can can't control the outcome is just always going to be bad no matter how hard I try, right? It's this sort of loss of control in a very negative way. It's not like Oh, good things are happening to me. It's, you know, it's generally associated with, you're helpless to make things better. What do you think even Seligman is research found that if you can sort of teach people that just because you fail sometimes and your actions don't always lead to the outcomes that you want, doesn't mean that they're always going to fail, right? So they think he he generally finds, you know, if you can teach people that this isn't going to last forever, there will be times when when things get better, and sort of the bad stuff will go away eventually.

- 20:52  

And then we'll have some good luck, some of their efforts will eventually pay off.

- 20:58  

And if you can sort of get that mindset into people If you can also teach people that they do have control over some things, right? Like just because you failed in one context doesn't mean that you're an utter failure and it defines you. It just means you failed in that one context. There probably all sorts of other things you'll succeed at if you try. And that sort of mindset is actually set up. I think the whole field of positive psychology, right that's been so big these last couple of decades is how do you teach people to overcome, learned helplessness and instead, create these more optimistic hopeful mindsets of you can do many things. If you try hard enough, good things will potentially happen to you if you keep working on them. And failure, even repeated failure in one context doesn't mean you're a failure in everything. It doesn't define you. That is a hard thing to learn, you know when I mean it stinks to try really hard To fail, and especially to do so over and over. But then you look out and you see lots of people failed a lot early on.

- 22:10  

And you got to sort of remind yourself, this isn't gonna last forever.

- 22:15  

We will eventually figure out what we're good at.

- 22:19  

Yeah, I think changing our mindset can be so powerful but the same time so hard. Yeah. A lot of people tend to be catastrophizing. Yeah. And think about the worst of the worst scenario very quickly. And for doctors, ligaments, words work, at least, I know I see a lot of people clinically who are very pessimistic, right. So like what he mentioned what you mentioned the research, I think they are determined to explain things more internally more permanent, and feels like it's it's generalized to everything that Elias and then We'll see if we can really help or encourage people to look inside and realize those patterns sometime, I think just be aware that all is planning things in this way. And there's a lot of suffering in me in myself, and maybe that would start getting some motivation for them to think what else can I do? If you know the thing around me is still the same thing? Why trigger me not other people, the kind of change the way I look at it, and they possibly can feel a little bit more hopeful.

- 23:37  

Yeah, I hope so too.

- 23:40  

And this is, that reminds me of

- 23:44  

an educational researcher I listened to recently who was saying this is a great time because that sort of pessimistic thinking is so common. This is a great time maybe if you have children to sort of Teach them That they can get through this this time. This could almost be a learning opportunity. I think for a lot of people. Maybe I'm being a Pollyanna here, but you know, maybe a chance to teach your children. Look, one way to look at this situation is It's horrible. It's always going to be horrible. There's nothing we can do about it ever, you know. But another way to look at it is to say, look, it stinks for right now. It's not working out, we're having to you know, you can't go to camp this summer, you can't see your friends. We can't go to your ballet classes or soccer games or what have you, and it stinks. But you're strong enough to get through this and it's temporary, it's going to eventually get better. And you can maybe even create some new lines of things that make you happy, right? Like maybe you can take up art at home or my son is suddenly developing a love for water outside. I mean, you know, maybe you can come up with some other activity. And figure out some other things so that it's not this overwhelming, all encompassing thing that you've lost control over, but you can maybe develop some, some new, good things out of us even.

- 25:12  

I really liked it to shift this or use this opportunity to really develop or guide attention to something else, especially when we deal with children. I think our own mindset, how we view things matters, possibly much more important because we are not only impacting ourselves, we are impacting children, family members around us, and children. They don't know much. They feel sad, they cannot go to school, they cannot hang out with friends. And like the how they view this situation, they're going to be hugely impacted by how parents view that right. Yeah, so I really like this, this this strategy you're talking about. itself, it's so positive that well let's use this as a learning opportunity, what we can do what we can explore. Let's just all be so curious about the normal things around us.

- 26:11  

Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that that even reminds me of

- 26:17  

is

- 26:18  

and it seems so obvious in retrospect, but I grew up in a rural place in Southern Illinois. And all summer I would sometimes go without seeing people, you know, because because I just lived far away from people and I, you know, couldn't drive my parents worked. I was basically at home by myself with my parents for pretty much the whole summer. And I was not traumatized by that. Yeah, I got bored. I probably watched a little too much TV but but I survived and I'm you know, moderately well adjusted. So I think our children can can survive too.

- 26:52  

Yeah, that's very important. Good point for I think, all as parents to keep in mind

- 26:59  

anybody In US adults, right? I survived when I was eight, I can survive when I'm you know, 28 or 38 or 58.

- 27:06  

Yeah, exactly. Actually, in clinical psychology, we talk about that. Well, will you face a current challenge? Think about the this kind of thing or similar situations happened to you before? How do you do cope with it before? If you somehow figure out a way to cope with something you're facing right now, like similarly before, then you possibly going to be able to do it again?

- 27:31  

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that goes back to the control thing, right to realizing that you can't handle this.

- 27:37  

Yeah. So there are so many ways for us to really realize there actually could be control we can find a sense of control, possibly no matter what if we really look, we really pay attention to that.

- 27:52  

Absolutely.

- 27:54  

Wonderful. So at the end of the show, I like to ask them gasps you know, if there's all the people are listening are trying to learn more about this kind of information to learn a way to help themselves. What is one thing you really want people to know or one thing you really want to

- 28:21  

pass out and let people be aware of regarding today's topic, possibly Oh, that's it.

- 28:30  

That is a very hard question that I wish I could impress on people is you can get through this. In the worst case, you'll get assistance from other people and you might have some hard times ahead of you, right, you might need to spend some time in the hospital or figure out what resources your community has. If you've lost your job, that kind of thing. But even if the worst thing you imagine happens to you You can get through this and you might even be a little stronger and have a little increased well being at the get at the end of it. Knowing that, that you're a survivor, and, you know, together we can all get through this.

- 29:13  

Love it. Keep the hope up. Uh huh. Yeah.

- 29:20  

Thank you very much, Liz for sharing all this wonderful research with us. And I'm sure at least this gave me hope. And I hope this gave other audience hope and encourage them to look for sense of control in their life.

- 29:36  

Oh, I hope so too. And it's always a pleasure to chat with you. You Shawn. You are so thoughtful and I'm so thankful for the work you're doing out there.

- 29:45  

All people can find you do have a website we do

- 29:48  

dog. We have a website for psychology compass. It's just psychology compass. One word co MP a s s.com. Um, and like I said, We've got free resources. We also have some subscription resources if you want to get more in depth. And your You can also read, I've got some writings on psychology today. And yeah, I hope to be updating my blog soon with more

- 30:16  

writings. And if people want to read the articles you're writing for Psychology Today and other places, you can just search your name Elizabeth Gilbert, right, they will find you.

- 30:26  

Yeah, they might also find that our author Elizabeth Gilbert, but if you put in psychology or psychology compass, I should pop up.

- 30:35  

Okay, that but that make your name very easy to remember.

- 30:38  

Yeah, that's true. Okay.

- 30:41  

Great.

- 30:42  

Thank you so much, Liz. Thank you so much, Shawn. Take care be well.

- 30:47  

Yeah, you too. Bye.

- 30:50  

Bye. A lot of times, when we feel hopeless, when we feel like we cannot control anything when we feel really stuck in our life, we are under quite a lot of stress. And of course, that will impact our sleep, our life, our relationship, and everything. in psychology, there is a concept called radical acceptance. That means try to control what we are able to control and try to work on what we can change and try to accept those that we cannot control. So hopefully today's conversation with Dr. Gilbert, bring more hope to you all. If you want to find more information about the resources she mentioned and to read more about her, you can go to our show notes at www.deepintosleep.co/episode/038. Thank you for coming to “Deep into Sleep” and I will see you next week. Sleep is an individual thing. We all sleep differently, and there is so much we can do to improve sleep quality, keep hope, and carry on. This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not include the practice of medicine or other health professional services. usage of the information we share is that the listeners own risk and our content is not intended to be a substitute for any medical and professional services, diagnosis, and treatment. please seek professional health services as needed.

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Dr. Yishan Xuhope, stress, COVID-19, coronavirus, hopeless, desperate, depressive1 Comment