From Stress to Strength: A Psychologist's Journey Back to Mental Well-being - Hanu HRV

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From Stress to Strength: A Psychologist's Journey Back to Mental Well-being

Episode 42 • 11th July 2023 • Hanu HRV • HanuHRV (owned by Hanu Health, Inc)

[0:00:35] Dr. Jay: And so we're back. I debated for so long as to whether or not I would do this podcast, not the podcast in general, but this episode in particular, because I want to more or less lay out some of my own vulnerabilities, if you will. There's this interesting notion, I think, in the field of health and wellness, but especially in mental health, that the individual based on their specialty should kind of have it altogether within the context of their own specialty. So in other words, cardiovascular disease, doctor or cardiologist, that is, they should not be stricken with cardiovascular disease.

[0:01:53] Dr. Jay: So why would we never experience or never expect, I should say, a psychologist, mental health practitioner, therapist to never experience emotional or mental health issues, to think that, I think is a huge fallacy. So I'm here today to open up and be vulnerable about all things, my own emotional health and mental wellness, because I don't think that we should expect a mental health practitioner to never experience mental health struggles.

[0:03:08] Dr. Jay: It's a very topic that's near and dear to my heart. And I just felt compelled to share with you my own personal struggles and then tell you what I'm doing about it and what's helpful for me with the intention of nothing other than letting you know that you're not alone in this and that emotional and mental health are really important and they should be the pyramid. I would say the bottom of the pyramid for you in terms of importance and what we should have at, again, the base of our knowledge and understanding and practice of health and wellness.

[0:04:57] Dr. Jay: It's a really hardcore work pace. And there was a lot of time, there was a lot of effort, there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears, if you will, throughout that process. And so for me, it took its toll. It took its toll on me mentally and physically. And a lot of the members on the Hano team, we all experienced that it was difficult process. Part of it is just naturally what occurs in the startup world. But I would say that a lot of it also was self imposed.

[0:06:32] Dr. Jay: And if you're someone who is on this journey, which you are, because you're human, you have a heartbeat, you have a brain, you inevitably are going to experience periods of chronic stress, anxiety, depression, god forbid, things like traumatic experiences, or even severe and persistent mental health. All of these things are a part of life experience, especially stress, anxiety and depression. The numbers are quite staggering on how many people experience these things.

[0:07:41] Dr. Jay: I think it'll help a lot. I think it'll move the needle tremendously. Is it the sole answer? For some it could be, but for most it's not going to be. For most people it's going to be a combination of many different things that truly move the needle for mental health. So I want to start off a little bit. I just think it makes sense to share with you a bit of my own personal journey and background. Obviously, many of you know that I'm a clinical psychologist, so I went to school to be a clinical psychologist, which means work with clinical populations, those who are diagnosed with a clinical disorder that might be found in what we call the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or the DSM.

[0:08:58] Dr. Jay: I can't say that I am someone who was necessarily driven consciously to this position or to this job because of that mentality. And I've been doing a lot of personal reflection here lately. I do believe that I was driven from fear. The biggest thing for me is that I look back on my childhood and growing up and I felt like I had a lot to live up to. I felt a lot of pressure, some internally for myself and some externally.

[0:10:16] Dr. Jay: And I find myself ebbing and flowing. It's like waves for me where sometimes I feel like I'm riding on top of the wave and I'm surfing, hanging, tin, like really enjoying the experience, feel very motivated, very passionate, very driven, very excitable. And then there's other times where the wave breaks and I'm on top. And then I get crushed. And isn't that how emotional experience works sometimes?

[0:11:25] Dr. Jay: I came to basically the realization in the last few months that a lot of my stress and anxiety in times of sadness was being driven by guilt and shame and feeling like I was a bit of, I guess more or less, you could say a hypocrite. Because I'm a psychologist, right? I should have everything all together. It's back to the first thing I was saying at the beginning of the podcast. I should have all my stuff together, right? I should have everything in line.

[0:12:35] Dr. Jay: I would argue the latter. And I'm going to talk a lot about that in my own personal journey here in just a second. But for me, I came to this fork in the road where I said to myself, am I going to be a hypocrite anymore? Because I'm not practicing what I preach from a mental health standpoint. And I know that it's really hard for me to be objective sometimes and I need the input from others. I need the support and the accountability from others. Something, again, I preach a lot as the co founder of Hanu, but also as a psychologist.

[0:13:40] Dr. Jay: So I want to talk now about my journey. If you've heard the Hanu Health podcast before, or you heard me speak on other podcasts before, you know that I talk about the four pillars of health. We talk about high quality nutrition, high quality sleep, high quality exercise, and then stress mitigation or stress resiliency. And there's a lot that kind of falls under that fourth pillar. The one thing that I've had a really difficult time with here recently isn't the exercise component, the sleep component, or the nutrition component.

[0:14:47] Dr. Jay: Have it met many people who would say that's fun? But what happens if over and over and over again, you completely avoid it? You put it aside? Humans do one of two things right. You implode or you explode. That's the direction you go if you do not face the experience of emotional and mental health difficulties. There's a therapeutic modality in the mental health space. And when I say modality, I'm talking about an approach, a school of thought or a school of training.

[0:16:06] Dr. Jay: It's everywhere in health and wellness. There's one notion that this has been perpetuated fairly often in the mental health space by mental health practitioners and some schools of mental health therapy, most particularly in cognitive behavioral therapy, which has been all about catching and challenging thoughts and replacing thoughts with, quote, unquote, more realistic or positive thoughts. I ascribed to that notion a long time ago, and I found that there was a lot of temporary relief that it could provide through the analysis process, but it was very short lived.

[0:17:30] Dr. Jay: So, for instance, the good about CBT is this whole idea of catching automatic and intrusive thoughts. That's a really good concept to have, catching kind of the automatic, kind of just bubble bursting thoughts that occur that's a really good thing. Intrusive thoughts, that's a really good thing to at least acknowledge instead of trying to push away. So catching those things are really good. I also think that from a CBD perspective, linking your thoughts and behavior with one another, also linking your thoughts with emotion and behavior is a really good concept to analyze.

[0:18:54] Dr. Jay: And instead of trying to replace them or think about challenging them or asking if they're realistic or not, as you just sit with it, it's a state of acceptance, a state of mindfulness. It helps us to disconnect from those thoughts as just language and narrative as opposed to deconstruct. By replacing thoughts and narrative, it's all about mindfulness and then also linking what you're doing with your value system.

[0:20:02] Dr. Jay: Family is my biggest value and it is the one that I keep coming back to over and over and over again because it is the one that is my true driver. And so when I think about my family, I think what am I doing right now? Is it working me towards my value or is it working away? Is it pulling me away from living a values driven life? And that's where act has really come in to help me defuse from this narrative, this challenging narrative, to help me quit compartmentalizing and stuffing it away and just simply allowing myself to sit and experience emotion.

[0:21:23] Dr. Jay: It warns us. It has us question again if whether or not what we're doing is in line with our value system. So for me, it's been a matter of really doing what I can to shift my focus, to be more mindful, to be more values driven, and to diffuse from the narrative the inner dictator that sits on the shoulder constantly chirping and ask myself every time, is that helpful? Is it workable? A lot of times I'll just thank my mind, yeah, thanks a lot, mind.

[0:22:33] Dr. Jay: If you think about the way those two are worded, which is intentional, we intentionally change the wording. We can actually unhook and diffuse ourself from that thought and that experience in a very healthy way. Instead of defining myself as I'm anxious right now and saying, I'm noticing that I'm anxious right now, it gives it a lot less power. For instance, if I tell you right now that in the next 60 seconds, I want you to say the word Lemons.

[0:23:51] Dr. Jay: Like the word incompetent. It's one I use a lot in my own narrative. Sometimes I'll just say that word over and over and over again for 60 seconds, and it just sounds like noise. And it has a lot less power because I'm diffusing from that word, from the frame of that word. So that's how I've been using act in more therapeutic tools as a mechanism to help me with persistent states of stress and anxiety and depression. Over the last few months, I've also been incorporating a lot of other main tools for emotional health.

[0:25:01] Dr. Jay: And then Vo two max training or increasing Vo two max. And I've paid a lot of emphasis for mental and physical health on Vo two max training. Vo Two max is essentially the maximum amount of oxygen that you can take in at its peak, and that number is directly correlated with longevity outcomes. So as we increase our Vo two max, we increase longevity markers related to cardiovascular or cardio respiratory fitness, but other things as well from a physiological perspective. But we know too that it has a direct impact, and there's research that indicates this, it has a direct impact on mental and emotional health, which is very compelling.

[0:26:16] Dr. Jay: But also I've been doing zone five and Vo two max training religiously for twice a week. What I do are interval trainings. These generally last around an hour or so, do about a ten minute warm up, and then I do a Vo two max interval for four minutes. If you don't know your Vo two max, which a lot of wearables will tell you, like Apple health garmin is another one that will do it as well. There's other ones that will provide pretty accurate estimations of Vo two max without you having to go through the intensity of getting a Vo two max test done.

[0:27:29] Dr. Jay: So it's pretty hard training and it's four minutes of all out, I won't say all out, 90% to 95% out run, and then it's a four minute break after that. So four minute recovery, I say break, I'm either doing a light jog or a walk to really cool down and bring the heart rate down and then I repeat that three more times. So four intervals of work for Vo two max. So at max capacity, basically 90% to 95% of heart rate, max heart rate for that time period.

[0:28:29] Dr. Jay: So building muscle mass, building strength and stability for generally around 95 sorry, Jeez, 45 minutes per workout. So that's exercise. Let's talk about nutrition now. So nutrition is another very important pillar that I probably paid a lot more attention to, maybe even more so than exercise, about, I don't know, let's say three or four years ago. And then I think very similar to Peter Atia, and I would say that he has been one of the primary reasons that I've changed a little bit of my view on this from a longevity health span and mental and emotional health span. I probably put exercise maybe a little bit more above nutrition. Not saying that I've just thrown everything out the window and eat nothing but Burger King and McDonald's every day.

[0:30:12] Dr. Jay: Or I wouldn't say they don't work. I will say that they are not enhanced without proper intake of protein within the diet. And I would say that for me, I had a lot more emphasis on moderating protein and increasing things like fat and reducing carbs. But I've kind of changed my tune a little bit on that. Given the latest research and then also experimentation on how I feel, what I see on things like continuous glucose monitors, I would say that now I eat a more heavy or protein forward diet, moderate fat diet, and then more like a moderate carbohydrate diet, very omnivorous.

[0:31:22] Dr. Jay: And again, I'm feeling good. Sleep, I've been focusing on that a lot. I've never been a poor sleeper, except for maybe like when I was a resident or when I was an intern. I worked a lot of hours, a lot of chaotic hours. And so I would say that my sleep was rather poor then. My other behavioral habits weren't great either back then, but other than that, I've never had significantly poor outcomes for sleep.

[0:32:22] Dr. Jay: Yes, it gives you really good data for sleep, even though the HRV data, I'm sure it is bunk. I do not look into their HRV data, but their sleep staging data actually find to be pretty accurate. But for me, I didn't get it for the sensors. I got it for the cooling and heating capacity and its ability to regulate throughout the night based on sleep architecture. So actually, looking at what stage of sleep you're in, whether it's deep sleep or non rim or rim or light or even awake, where are you at? And then adjusting the bed temperature accordingly. I found it to be phenomenal. My heart rate is lower, my HRV is higher.

[0:33:46] Dr. Jay: It's pretty light hearted, but a lot of times, like around 09:00, I'm ready to go upstairs and at least get in bed and just shut the brain down. And sometimes, actually most nights, I'll do a bit of reading. Low light. I've got red light glasses on. Just have the red bulbs in our room are on. I know it might sound a little bit odd, but it just helps me to down regulate the brain and the body for sleep, maybe do a little bit of meditation, some downtime breathing training.

[0:34:55] Dr. Jay: I'm doing a lot of resonance breathing, a lot of biofeedback. Obviously, it's the core of what we do at Hanu in terms of the app. And I find that every time I do it, it reinforces why I've done it. When I see a 5100, 200% increase in heart rate variability over the course of 60 seconds, two minutes, that is really compelling. What is that telling me? That's telling me that my nervous system is adjusting accordingly. It is listening to me when I speak.

[0:36:09] Dr. Jay: So if you're not doing a form of functional breathing training, the one that I would introduce is that go get your Hanu and do resonance breathing. And I think that you will be blown away that the more and more you practice this, the more and more you will see that dial move in an upward direction. And it's incredibly potent. It's incredibly potent. So I would challenge you, as my micro ear shakes, as I hit it with my chin, I would challenge you to look into that as being a primary option for you, resonance breathing, because it truly helps to resonate your vagus nerve and your autonomic nervous system, to cool down your blood pressure, to regulate.

[0:37:18] Dr. Jay: The evidence is very clear that when we take the time to both give and receive gratitude, it changes us for the better. It changes our neural pathways, it changes our autonomic nervous system, heart rate variability goes up. It has been studied clinically that when individuals participate in a gratitude based practice, gratitude journaling, that they themselves will see regulation of their autonomic nervous system.

[0:38:31] Dr. Jay: And the only way that we can diffuse from our thinking and learn the state of acceptance of our emotional experience is to turn off autopilot and to be mindful of our present moment without judgment, just experiencing what we're experiencing, not for the sake of changing anything, but for the sake of being human. Humans don't live in the past, we don't live in the future. We live at the current breath we're taking, which is another reason why breathing is so important.

[0:39:37] Dr. Jay: The last thing that I want to talk about in regards to my emotional journey is something that I've been doing, which is more like a hack on something that I've always done, or at least that I frequently or consistently practice, which is walking. And it's walking and thinking deeply. I read an amazing book by Cal Newport called Deep Work. Read it a while back. And what he talks about in his book is that he does what are called like meditative walks. And basically these are meditative walks where he takes one problem, one problem in this day that he's trying to solve.

[0:40:45] Dr. Jay: Simply just bring myself back to the sounds, the sights, the smells, the tastes, the feels, all the five senses in these meditative walks. So do like a combination of these more or less like mindful, nature walks and thinking deeply problem solving walks like Cal Newport said. I love this quote from Friedrich Nietzsche. He says, all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking. I totally agree with that. I may not agree with everything that Nietzsche proposed and he had his own problems, but it's a great quote. All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

[0:41:53] Dr. Jay: And then I want to talk now in the podcast with my venture that I'm on that I'm really excited about. And I mentioned at the very beginning of this podcast, but I want to talk now about accountability and relationships and how that is deeply intertwined with emotional and mental health. I know, again, I sound like a broken record. You've heard me say this, if you listen to this podcast. But we are inherently relational beings. There's no doubt about it that we are meant to be in a tribe. We are meant to be communal. We are meant to be a part of our society. We are communal beings at our core.

[0:43:44] Dr. Jay: I think it's paramount. I think that if you truly want to take back your mental health and well being, all the stuff that I've talked about this far is really helpful. But I think the societal connection, the accountability portion, is one that you just simply cannot overlook because it is so incredibly potent and powerful to have that objective bystander who's willing to walk with you on that journey, to listen to you intently and then to help guide.

[0:44:59] Dr. Jay: So that's why we have our Hanu certified coaches. That's why we have you have the ability to go on right now and see these individuals. And I found to myself, I had to do a lot of soul searching. I said, I need one of these myself. And if I need it and can benefit from it, then you can too. And so my call to action for you is to really do some soul searching and some deep diving into how are you living a life that's congruent with your values? So you have to first identify what are your values and then how do you move forward in life in all of these pillars of health, find accountability and actually put things into action, commit to action.

[0:46:23] Dr. Jay: All these things together combined make for such a potent and aggressive approach to mental wellness and emotional health. Quit letting emotional health be on the back burner like I did. It's going to catch up to you. It's got to be the foundation of your pyramid. If you don't have good emotional health, then who cares if you have a really thick cardiovascular system? Who cares if you're getting good sleep, who cares if you're like eating all the right foods, all that's great, we need those.

[0:47:37] Dr. Jay: I'm just elongating more suffering on the emotional side, maybe delaying, let's say, the physical impact that aging has on the body. But emotionally, I'm not there. And also kind of just hit me a light bulb epiphany moment, if you will. And I'm not in the shower. I'm not walking or running. Is that if you are extending your lifespan, if you're extending your health span, or at least if your goal is to extend lifespan and health span, and you're not addressing emotional health where you're leaving a lot on the table, you're doing a lot of damage.

[0:49:07] Dr. Jay: And if you are that person, I just say it's time. It's time to take the step, commit to some action, and quit living life kind of dragging your feet and dreading waking up each morning, and dreading going to work, and dreading, and dreading, and dreading. It's time to end it now, everybody. If you're interested in Hanuh health at all, check us out hanuhhealth.com. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, at hanuh health.

[0:49:58] Dr. Jay: Looking forward to bringing so much new content that's really going to be a lot more emotional mental health focused in the future. All right, everybody, take care. Have a wonderful rest of your day and week. We'll see you next time.