Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Dr. Samantha Brody, known as Dr. Samantha. She’s a licensed naturopathic physician and acupuncturist and founder of the Evergreen Natural Health Center in Portland, Oregon. As a primary care provider with extensive training and experience in both complementary and Western medicine, Dr. Samantha has worked with over 30,000 patients for over 20 years.
Her mission? To empower patients to address the stress in their lives, and to help them make changes that are in alignment with their health goals and their deepest values. She holds a doctoral degree in naturopathic medicine and a master’s degree in Oriental medicine from the National University of Natural Medicine.
In this conversation, Dr. Samantha and I looked at how we can start the new year looking at our deepest intentions, and how all of our activities can align with that so we don’t fall into feeling overwhelmed without a sense of an inner taproot and direction. Here’s my conversation to start off 2019 with Dr. Samantha.
Here we are, Dr. Samantha, in the beginning of a new year, and many people are attempting to turn a new leaf. Or, as they say in the publishing world, it’s time for . . . this always gets me, it’s “New year, new you.”
Dr. Samantha Brody: Right.
TS: And I always think, “Really? New year, new you?”
But anyway, my point is, as a naturopathic physician and someone who works with educating people about lifestyle changes, what have you found helps people stick with their New Year’s resolution versus it being a quickly fading memory?
SB: That’s a great question. I tend to encourage people, instead of making resolutions, to have either an intention or a theme. Because if you have an intention or a theme, rather than a resolution, you can’t fail.
And I feel that we set ourselves up with a particular thing that we need to accomplish when statistically, as you said, the likelihood is that people may not follow through with it for the long term. I think there are some studies showing that people stick with only 18 percent of resolutions, long haul. So I reframe it for my patients and my clients and the people I work with around: “Here’s an intention or a theme or an idea that I have of something that I want to create in my life,” rather than a specific end-goal resolution, a hard-number-to-hit thing.
Although, of course, there’s some benefit to doing that. I think if we’re able to be, I guess, more gentle with ourselves, and have it be something that we’re working toward, instead of a thing that we can fail or succeed at, that people tend to do better and feel better about themselves in the end.
TS: You have this interesting quote from your new book, Overcoming Overwhelm, “You can’t fail at self-care.” I think that’s very interesting, because I think many of us are afraid we’re going to fail at self-care. Tell me what you mean by that?
SB: When I say you can’t fail at self-care, what I’m implying is that when we are doing things for ourselves, it is a continuum, and it’s an ongoing process as our lives evolve. If we have an intention to do something—and we are not, say, able or willing or in the end, something’s keeping us from doing those things—then we are choosing to do because it aligns with where we want to head or what we want to do for ourselves. The process of trying and finding that it’s not working, for whatever reason, is a learning experience that helps us drive our choices for the future—rather than, similar to the resolution idea, that you can’t really fail at it if the idea is that it’s an ongoing process rather than a specific one-time event.
You’re not failing at self-care if you don’t get to the gym on Wednesday, or if you don’t get to the gym for a month. You are learning something about making a choice that, for some reason, you’re not able to follow through with. And then, when we can take that as an impetus to look at where are. Where do we need to do work to be able to line up our choices with our values in a more authentic, ongoing way.
TS: OK. So I’m just going to get really specific, and, you know . . .
SB: Sure.
TS: . . . I’m going to name the classic New Year’s resolution. After the holidays, when many of us have eaten more sugar and fat than we ever dreamed possible, it’s an intention or a theme to say, “I’d basically like to lose some weight this year.” How is that really different than saying, “I’m going to lose X number of pounds,” or some other goal?
SB: What I would encourage people to do in that context is, instead of saying, “I want to lose X number of pounds,” to say, “My theme for the year is honoring my body and making choices that line up with what my values are right now.” Or, “My theme for this year is movement.”
Then, look toward figuring out how you can make those things happen, which, over the long haul could theoretically lead to weight loss, if that is something that is important to the person for whatever reason. That is, whether it’s a choice or whether it’s a health issue that they need to address.
But that saying, “I’m going to lose X number of pounds,” as the classic New Year’s resolution, it’s particularly one of the most problematic, because there are things that get in the way of that—like life, right? Whether that’s [because] we get busy, or we . . .
One of the problems in general with the weight-loss resolution, in addition to . . . Well, there are many issues with it, but in addition to it being, “I’m going to lose this number of pounds,” it’s that often it’s an unreasonable expectation to begin with.
The intention is to say, “Alright, I’m going to make choices to eat the way that’s going to be most supportive for my body,” or “I’m going to move my body on a regular basis to feel well,” and to head toward this idea of what you want your life to look like, rather than a certain number on the scale, or even a certain pants size, really.
TS: That’s helpful. It’s like you took a few steps back, and got to an underlying, genuine motivation that this supposed person out there . . . I’m joking.
SB: Right.
TS: . . . that someone like me might have, which is to feel better in my body, something like that.
SB: Right. Right. Yes, absolutely. And that sometimes even the idea that . . . Ultimately, there’s a piece of “feeling better in our body” that we are looking for. It’s actually not even about feeling better in our body, but about this kind of societal expectation about what our body should look like, especially as women. And that, ultimately, when we’re eating the foods that really serve us—whatever that is, it does vary from person to person—and when we’re moving our bodies in the right way, and when we’re resting enough, your body weight ends up where it’s correct for your body weight to be.
Ultimately, it’s not so much about the weight loss to feel better in your body, although of course I’m not going to begrudge anyone saying, “Yes, I’d feel better if I were five pounds lighter or 10 pounds lighter.” That’s individual. But often it’s really about so much more. If really what we’re looking to do is feel good in our bodies, then what we do to ourselves around weight loss and diet isn’t necessarily even what we’re shooting for, ultimately. But because of the cultural dictums that we live under, we are driven in that direction.
TS: Now, Dr. Samantha, you’ve written this new book called Overcoming Overwhelm: Dismantle Your Stress From The Inside Out. And I’m curious to know—here you are, working as a naturopathic physician—how is it that you identified overwhelm as such an important topic, and a topic that you wanted to write about?
SB: That’s such a great question. When I started doing this work . . . The book is a step-by-step process to identify what’s most important, and then what things you’re going to address, as in, what you need to address to get to where you want to be.
When I started this process, it was actually geared toward stress instead of overwhelm. And at some point I realized that it wasn’t so much about the feeling of stress, which I think we can all identify with, but the overall accumulation of things that lead to us not feeling our best, whether that’s mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, whatever those things are.
The choices that we’re making on a day-to-day basis—I call them stresses because they build up, but ultimately it’s the mass, it’s the accumulation of the things that are impacting us that really makes the biggest difference. When we address those things, we’re able to make more room. When we’re not overwhelmed, we have more space to do things that are important to us, and make the choices that serve us, and to not be driven by our pathological drives—I should say, to do things that don’t serve us.
TS: Now, you mentioned that you teach a method for helping people overcome overwhelm.
SB: Yes.
TS: Can you describe, in brief brushstrokes, the method itself?
SB: Yes, absolutely. The first step that we look at is getting very clear about what’s most important to us. So that’s what our values are, what our true values are, how we want to feel, and what we want to accomplish in our lives. And I call that our “true north.” So, identifying your true north.
And then the next thing that we do is, in the book and in this process, once we identify where it is that we want to head, the next piece is looking at how we make change best, and what things may get in our way of decreasing our overall load, which ultimately is the thing that helps us overcome overwhelm, rather than, say, stress management.
Once we look at what we need to do to get in the right frame of mind, and to be able to understand how we work best, is to actually look at the accumulation of stresses in our lives. And I think about that not just as the big stresses, which we often think about. There’s something called the Holmes-Rahe scale that we learn when we’re studying psychology, to help you assess how much stress you have in your life. And it has you enumerate things like divorce and marriage and holidays, and these bigger things. I really think about it as being an accumulation of the big, the medium, the small, and the minutiae. Because it’s in the small or the minutiae that we often are able to identify places that we can change with more ease, right?
There are things that . . . One of the examples I give in the book is the squeaky drawer at my office. Every time I was opening it up for a year, it was just getting me on edge. And at some point that I realized, well, this is something I can easily change or just decide I’m not going to change, if it’s not an easy fix. And that lowering the load by identifying all of those things can help us figure out what exactly it is we need to, which is the last step.
By lining up what’s most important, how we want to feel, how we work best, we can then identify a handful of changes that are going to have the most impact with the least effort. Because ultimately you can’t do it all. We only have so many hours in the day and so much bandwidth in our lives.
TS: Well, it’s interesting that you’re saying—one of the things I picked up on—is that we could actually go after some of the small stressors in our life, and that’s a reasonable place to start.
SB: Yes.
TS: I think sometimes when people think of the things that they feel overwhelmed by, it’s these huge things that they don’t feel they have the power to change.
SB: Right.
TS: But when you’re talking about small things, like the squeaky drawer, I immediately thought of a couple small things I could do. And I thought, “Well, I could do that. It’s only going to take a couple of hours.”
SB: Yes. Right. And each thing, when you start hitting all of those small things, it gives you more room so you can handle some of those bigger things.
The things that you can change, right? There are many things you can’t. There are circumstances that we have that we don’t have control over. But identifying what it is that you can change, and what you can’t change, and then the things you’re choosing not to change, also gives you agency, right? It allows you agency back to say, “This is something I’m not going to change right now.” That squeaky drawer, for instance.
When I really got under it, I realized, oh, I’m going to have to either hire someone to come in here, or get a new desk. And then I went, “I’m not going to do that.” And then suddenly it wasn’t bothering me, because I was making the choice.
TS: You also made this interesting comment. It was that you can choose the things where the amount of energy in compared to the impact out . . . In business they would call that your return on investment.
SB: Right, your ROI.
TS: You can find some good ROI actions to take in your life.
SB: Yes.
TS: That seems very intelligent to me.
SB: Thank you. One of the things that I will often do with that, too, is that there are these . . . something that, for you, is going to have more impact than for someone else. So, I was actually having a podcast interview the other day—back to the squeaky drawer. And the gentleman I was talking to said, “Oh, that is never something I would just be able to leave. That’s something that would cause me stress, and that I wouldn’t be able to leave be.”
And so, for each person, being able to look at, specifically, how much that thing bothers you. Is it a high-impact stress? I have people look at the individual stresses and say, “Is this something that’s a non-negotiable thing to change at some point? Is it something that has a high impact with a small effort, or a high impact with a big effort?” And then you get to decide where you’re going to put your limited resources and energy, ultimately.
TS: Now, partially to get to know you better a little, Dr. Samantha, but also as way of being an exemplar, tell me a little bit about identifying your true north, for you—what you identified as most important to you, and how that became a constellating force in your life for how you spend your time?
SB: One of the values that’s really important to me is family. And there are a lot of different ways that can manifest for me. It’s the idea of looking at what is going to be best for them, versus best for me and for myself, in order to be present for my family, and in order to really make sure that the space that I’m creating isn’t full of stress and anxiety and overwhelm.
Because when I have a lot of moving pieces, that’s a direction I can head in too, obviously. We write about what we know in our lives. And so my intention to look at what’s most important in my life, for instance: family, and then use that to vet my own decisions. Not just for them, but for me, in order to, long-game, be able to be there for them.
I am constantly looking at what those things are and how they interact with each other, in order to be able to make a particular decision that, in the end, is going to line up with that value. Even though, in the moment, sometimes it doesn’t look like that’s what’s happening, because of all of the different moving pieces.
TS: One of the most interesting parts, to me, of the book, Overcoming Overwhelm, was when you wrote about the roadblocks people have to actually honoring their true north once they identify what it is. And one of them that I think relates to what we’re talking about here, is this idea of being a people-pleaser. And that, if we’re too much focused on pleasing people around us, that can come into conflict with honoring our sense of what our true north is.
How do you help people-pleasers?
SB: There are many different ways of . . . I guess there are two pieces there. There are some people who actually, their value is to do things for other people more than it is to do for themselves. And if that’s legitimately what their value is, that’s one thing. That’s very different than saying, “I’m going to please everyone around me because I don’t want to disappoint people, or because I don’t want to upset people, or because I don’t want to rock the boat.”
I think, again, it’s one of those issues of getting under it. Look at, well, why are you people-pleasing? What is it that you’re afraid of if you don’t do the thing that people expect of you? I think that we often don’t take the time to really look at what we’re choosing to do, from a perspective of what’s really most important to us. We go by this knee-jerk, “I’m going to do this because it’s expected, or because I’ve always done it, or because I don’t want to disappoint anyone,” whatever the reason is.
So actually look at where you’re saying yes, and when that is and isn’t appropriate—and are you actually making those choices because it lines up with what’s most important to you? One of my best tricks for that is to actually—instead of saying yes when people ask you to do something—to say, “I’m going to need to check my calendar and think about that for a minute. I’ll get back to you.” It allows you a little bit of space to be able to say, “Oh, actually, I looked and I’m not able to do that right now.” Or to be able to take the time to look at your values, and how you want to feel, and say, “Does this actually line up?” And to take the time to really feel into it, rather than knee-jerk doing things the way you’ve always done them.
TS: Now, another roadblock that you identify to living according to our genuine true north is something that you call self-sacrifice. And as I was thinking about overwhelm, and I was imagining the people in my life who I know, who I think really seem overwhelmed to me a lot of the time, and unable or unwilling to change that state of being. What I’ve said to myself is, “Yes, that person, they’re kind of a martyr. They’re really into this self-sacrifice thing.”
And I’ve found it very hard to get through to such people. They don’t really seem to want to care about what my suggestions are for taking a more what I would call “empowered,” or a view of more agency to make changes. Because they’re into self-sacrifice.
SB: Right. Ultimately, I think that people are either going to be willing to look at why they’re making choices or they’re not. And I think that it is common, in particular with that tendency, for people to have trouble looking inside, right? And there are ultimately those people . . . It’s also aligned a little bit with that victim mentality, right? Do you see that with those same types of people?
TS: Yes, but with this heavy martyr focus.
SB: Right. Right.
TS: Any suggestions for somebody . . . I guess if you identify yourself that way, then you may have turned this conversation off at this point.
SB: Right. Well, I think that people don’t tend to identify that, truthfully. I think the people who have that experience so deeply that they’re actually martyring themselves don’t realize that that’s what they’re doing. They really feel like it’s their responsibility or that it’s—I think that it’s a hard one. And I think that, ultimately, all you can do is model for those people what it’s like to take responsibility and use words to say, “Oh, I’m choosing this.” But ultimately, you can take a horse to water . . . .
I think that the shift of consciousness that needs to happen for people who really feel like that they . . . [For] people in that position, it’s hard. It’s a rough demographic, for sure. And ultimately, I think that it takes an awareness. An awareness to saying, “Is this truly in alignment with what I want?”
I think sometimes the subconscious drives us to make choices that line up with our subconscious experience. Or that our subconscious wants us to line up our external experience with our internal experience, or our subconscious belief systems.
So when someone really is coming from that place, it may be a psychological issue that really needs to be looked at. It’s a counseling issue and they have to say, “This isn’t working for me, and why?” And to look at if it’s a self-worth issue—you really feel like you need to do things for other people in that way in order to create a sense of self-worth for yourself? That is, again, another level of being aware and being willing to look at: “This doesn’t serve me, or the people I love when I, at the expense of myself, take care of other people.”
TS: Now, in your practice as a physician, are there physical correlates that show up when somebody is suffering from overwhelm? Are there physical indicators, and you go, “Oh, this has my attention.”?
SB: Right. I think one of the reasons I wrote this book to begin with is because it actually is the case, I would say, for every patient and client that I work with. Because our physical health, it’s inextricably wound with our psychological health and our state of mind and our day-to-day choices.
My experience in my practice is that when people have a health condition . . . There’s occasionally something where you’re born with a hole in your heart, obviously, or a valve issue or some kind of issue like that that’s just a straight-up physiological issue. But in most cases, what we have is a disposition for certain health issues. One person might have a disposition for, say, anxiety or depression or psychological issues. Other people may have a disposition for headaches or digestive issues or inflammation.
When our systems are overwhelmed, it can manifest in that physical health condition. And so it doesn’t necessarily mean . . . Of course, there’s always going to be a case where you cut out pickles, and your red bumps on your nose go away, or whatever thing it is—you’re having a direct correlation. But most often what I see with my patients and clients is that there’s this overwhelming . . . The way that I talk about stress, the stress that is leading to overwhelm, is like a bucket. It fills up the bucket until it overflows. And then whatever your weak spot is, that’s how it’s going to manifest.
It’s this accumulation of stresses, and when we’re able to get that down, symptoms get better, even if it’s not a specific thing that’s related to that symptom. So, the answer is really all health conditions, or almost all health conditions, will have at least some part of it being driven by this state of overwhelm on our system, if not on our day-to-day, hour-to-hour.
TS: Was there a period in your life, Dr. Samantha, that you would identify as, “Oh, that’s a period where I was really overwhelmed, and these are the changes that I had to make for that to be different in my life.”?
SB: There have been many of those over my lifetime, and I think that when people pay attention, that any time something comes up health wise, or emotionally . . . When I was working on the book proposal for Overcoming Overwhelm, I was about to get it wrapped up and get it to my agent, and my dad had a massive stroke, and ended up passing away, dying, about a week later.
I ended up needing to put a pause on the book for about four months, I think. And it was very . . . That was one thing after many, many other things piling up. It was a rough season of my life. And it was a circumstance that was really outside of my control, obviously, but it was very clear the way my body responded—and I responded emotionally to that—that I needed to make some changes in the way I was approaching how I was working on my writing. And, basically, my second job, because I have a full-time job as well, with my practice.
So, it happened recently in that case, but really, there are so many times when that has happened. It happened when I was in medical school and I got mono and I couldn’t get out of bed for months. Then it’s happened in some experiences in the past where I’ve had anxiety when, obviously, literally, the stress was leading to anxiety. And I had to say, “OK. What do I need to change here?”
For me it’s been therapy and looking within, and doing a lot of work on what is most important, and what should I say no to, and what do I need to do with my food. The non-negotiables for me, which over time have taken up—It’s very clear for me what I need to do in my life as far as the non-negotiables on an ongoing basis. And then, as I age, of course, that changes.
There are layers that pile on, but I think it’s normal and natural for everybody to go through those phases. And instead of feeling penned in by them, I would say, “Alright, what is it that I can . . . .” I don’t mean to imply to not feel your feelings around whatever’s happening, but to feel them and to go through them and then say, “Alright, now what? How can I take this and move forward in a way that’s going to serve me better?” And I’m constantly adjusting how I’m working, and what I’m doing with my schedule, in order to make room for feeling my best.
TS: One of the themes that runs through Overcoming Overwhelm is that what you’re teaching people is not so much just about tactics and what you call “logistics,” but that it’s about having a different kind of mindset. And, as you were describing the events that have occurred in your life—whether it’s being in medical school and being under a lot of pressure and getting mono, or having your father have a stroke and then die right while you’re in the midst of finishing a big project, a big writing project—I thought to myself, well, these are normal things that happen, but somehow Dr. Samantha, and all of the rest of us who move through these periods of overwhelm successfully, have a certain kind of what you call “mindset.” There’s a mindset that says, “I’m going to make the changes that are needed now, so that I can come back into alignment with what I care the most about.”
How would you describe that mindset?
SB: Interestingly, I think that there are certain parts of the mindset that—I think it really varies from person to person. I think it’s resilience: deciding that I’m going to adjust how I’m approaching this, to know that I’m going to come out the other side with new tools, and be able to take the most out of the situation.
Because bad things happen to good people all the time, and I don’t really think that things happen for a reason, and that things necessarily are there to teach us a lesson, but that we can take whatever the situation is and say, “OK, what can I take from this to change my life and the lives of the people around me for the better?” So I don’t really know if there’s a particular word that I would use for that, except for maybe resilience. And intention. The mindset of having an intention to take your experience and use it for good rather than to allow it to undo you.
TS: Now, you mentioned that even the foods that we eat can contribute to feeling energized and resourceful, or feeling that we’re drowning in our life. Tell me a bit about how you educate your patients on eating for greater energy to help when you’re in a period, especially, of feeling overwhelmed.
SB: Right. That’s one of the hardest things, because we use food in our culture so much to make us feel better. We eat comfort foods, and we go to food to stuff our feelings. We go to food to feel better. We go to food to . . . It’s something that we can control, usually, and it’s something that we often go to.
What I work on with my patients—it’s different for everyone, what they need to do from a food perspective, as far as what’s best for them. But there are certain things that, across groups, are always going to make people feel better—to decrease the load. Because the food that you eat is a place that you do have control. It is a place where you can make choices to serve you.
The more stressed we are and more overwhelmed we feel, we tend to make worse choices instead of better choices. And ultimately, when we’re able to look at our food and what we’re eating and how we’re nourishing ourselves, and to use food in a way that really builds us up instead of breaking us down—that can be something that can help us decrease our overall load pretty swiftly, actually.
One of the things that I tend to talk to people about doing in my practice is making sure they’re getting enough protein. Because the more protein you get, the more stable your blood sugar’s going to be, and the more energy you’re going to have. The next thing I would say, in particular for women—we tend to under-eat, especially based on diet culture. In particular, women who are over 30, between the ages of 30 and 60. There are many years of a cut-your-calories, watch-your-fat kind of approach to eating. And I think that what I see most often when I have people check their food is that they’re under-eating rather than overeating, and sometimes eating the things that don’t really serve them as well—in particular sugar, which can wreak all kinds of havoc on our systems. If there’s one thing that I really work with people on it’s to figure out how to cut sugar down in their diets to help them with their energy and their mood and their overall inflammation and how they feel in their bodies. But that’s something I do with every single one of my patients and clients.
TS: Now, another thing that I want to be sure to talk about is a source of overwhelm that you write about in Overcoming Overwhelm. You write that, “According to a recent American Psychological Association survey, financial stress is considered to be the most significant stressor in people’s lives.”
SB: Yes.
TS: And this made sense to me, that when you’re under financial stress it can be hard to say, “What’s my true north,” and blah blah blah. You’re on survival, and your body’s in a survival mode. How do you educate people who feel that they’re under financial stress so much that they’re just plain overwhelmed?
SB: Yes. And there are layers of why that’s very complicated as well. I think many people feel financial stress, whether or not they’re in a position of, say, just straight-up survival and getting food on the table, and those are very different kinds of levels of stress.
What I say to people is that there is always something that you have control of. And even though, many times, we don’t have control over our circumstance, because we have been born into a certain lack, into a culture where we don’t have access to education, or we don’t have access to healthy food where we live, or we need to work three jobs because we’re single moms, or whatever that thing is. I think that there are always places where we can make choices, even when there are things we don’t have a lot of control over. And ultimately trying to pull things, say, “Well, where do I have some control, and what choices can I make to feel better?” There are definitely things about being in survival mode that will necessarily put you into a state of chronic stress. And continually looking at, “OK, how can I make the choices on a day-to-day basis, given my circumstance that I have right now?”
Because you’re starting where you’re starting. It’s your starting line, whatever that is. That’s where you are in your life now. And for many people it’s a question of budgeting, or it’s a question of saying, “My values are such that I am not going to spend money on X, Y, or Z, because it doesn’t actually line up with what’s most important to me.” And that can get the stress level down.
So, being really conscious about whether the choices you’re making financially line up with what your own values are is a huge piece of that. And again, I don’t want to minimize the fact that there are some people who are really struggling and suffering from that perspective. But, ultimately, most often, there are choices that can be made and changes that can be made that will help people not feel so stuck there.
And there are lots of people doing great work around that out there in the world—around feeling empowered and making good financial choices that can help you from wherever it is that you’re starting.
TS: It seems, Dr. Samantha, that one of the themes running through our conversation is this theme of finding the area in your life where you do have, you’re using this word “control” —where you do have a sense of control, and exercising control there. Why is that so critical?
SB: Well, it’s interesting. For me, that’s very important, but I’ve seen— because I’m just wired that way, but in general—I have worked with 30,000 or so people over the last 20 years, and what I find is that when people . . . It’s taking agency: when people feel like they’re not at the whim of the world around them, or that they are making choices, and therefore not victims. That sense changes how we interact with everything. When we feel that we are taking agency, you’re taking it back into your own hands—and knowing that you are not going to be a boat tossed around in the water in a way that you absolutely never know what’s coming next. Life is complicated, and life always is going to throw things at you.
The question is, how can we have stability enough and enough room in our lives that as things get thrown at us, it doesn’t completely knock us off-kilter? That’s why really choosing things that you do have control of helps us feel that we are able to not be overwhelmed. Ultimately, that’s what it is. We’re not overwhelmed because we’re choosing.
TS: Now there’s an interesting appendix at the end of the book that lays out the tenets of naturopathic medicine. And one of the things that I thought—I was very curious about this—that there are some ways embedded in the naturopathic medicine approach itself that could help people understand how to overcome overwhelm. And one of the tenets you mentioned is the healing power of nature. Where my mind went with that is that there’s a way that our bodies themselves, as part of nature, want to help us restore equilibrium and balance, if we can give in to our own natural physicality.
I wonder if you can talk about how you see that tenet—the healing power of nature—and how it relates to your approach to overcoming overwhelm?
SB: The idea is that our bodies have an innate ability to heal and find balance. That equilibrium is a natural state for humans, and it is our constant interruption of that that leads to more problems.
I always explain to my patients, our bodies were meant to be gathering food all day and then chasing down something for dinner. We’re not meant to be sitting on our butts in front of the computer, and we’re not meant to be in artificial light all the time.
And if we’re able to identify as many places as we can that we are pushing against the natural flow of what our bodies want to do, and we’re able to identify those things and stop doing them, we often will create space for our bodies to feel better. Whether that’s to not overeat and not undereat, or whether that’s making sure that we’re moving all the time. Or making sure that we are getting enough fresh air or sunlight, or the things that our bodies naturally would’ve done before we exposed them to all of the things in our modern world.
Much of the overwhelm comes from the—again, I’m going to use that word choices—the choices that we make day in and day out that are not in alignment with how our bodies are built and how they’re meant to function. And when we are able to remove those impediments or remove the things that are keeping our bodies from doing what they need to do—like sleeping well or digesting, having enough time to digest, whatever the specific things are that we’re able to move out of the way—the body will normally go to its healthy state.
Over time you can make choices that lead to health issues that you can’t just undo by making good choices. But I’m now thinking back to the comment you made, when we were talking a little bit earlier in our conversation, about New Year’s resolutions and weight. And I said, “Well, you know, if you’re eating the way you need to be eating, and you’re moving your body the way it needs to move, your body will go to where it needs to be based on whatever it is that your body needs at this time, based on your history and where you’ve been and all that.”
It’s the process of saying, “Alright, what do I need to do to allow my body to be as whole and healthy as it can be?”
TS: Now, one of the things you mentioned had to do with getting a good night’s sleep, under this category of the healing power of nature. And I do know people who have young children, and they’re not sleeping well, and they definitely seemed very overwhelmed to me. In talking to them, it seems like the lack of consistent sleep is probably affecting their psyche as much as any of the other responsibilities they have in terms of caring for their kids during the daytime hours.
SB: Right.
TS: What’s Dr. Samantha’s sleep hygiene quick list?
SB: For people with little kids, it is normal, when you have small children, for them to wake up. Now, it’s very controversial, obviously, but when we look at, “OK, what have our bodies done historically?” Well, historically, we didn’t put our kids in another room, where we would have to get up and go to them and then put them back down. You would just . . . Moms would typically just nurse during the night, and then, you know—I’m not weighing in on co-sleeping here, because that’s a whole other issue—but nursing during the night, and then the overall quality of sleep tends to better.
And then we also lived in a culture where people, historically, where the kids took care of the other kids in this kind of constant, one-on-one, “how am I going to get everything done myself in my house, in this vacuum,” is more complicated. I do think that a lot of the way that we are raising our children when they’re young is also not necessarily what our bodies are meant to do.
But as far as the big picture for sleep hygiene, first of all, shoot for seven and a half, minimum, eight hours of sleep; some people need more. And if you’re having trouble sleeping, figure out what you need to do to address that. Because sometimes there are health issues, hormonal issues—sometimes health conditions can actually keep you from sleeping well.
Screens off at least an hour before bed, because the blue light that comes from our devices actually suppresses melatonin and affects our ability to get good quality sleep. The one device that I would say doesn’t fall into that category is the Paperwhite Kindle, because it’s not backlit. But the Kindle Fire, any tablets, are going to have an impact on your circadian rhythm and your melatonin production.
Having your room dark is really important for good quality sleep. And try to make sure that you go to bed and get up at a similar time every day. It’s much harder to get good quality sleep when your schedule varies widely. Although, of course, there are some people who do need to do that for work.
And the last thing I would say for sleep hygiene in general, for getting good quality sleep, is to make sure that you have proper time to wind down at night. If you try to go from your day where you’re running around, and then you just hop into bed and expect to be able to close your eyes and fall right to sleep, that can be more complicated. Build whatever kind of, I like to call it a nighttime ritual, that people need to be able to actually wind down and close out the day. For people who tend to be very cerebral, sometimes even writing stuff down—I call it a brain dump—and then closing it. Write in a journal or a notebook and then put it elsewhere so those things aren’t interrupting your sleep, and you know you can always pick them up the next day.
TS: Now, I’ve heard different views on what to do if it’s the middle of the night and you find that you’re restless. You can’t sleep, you get up, it’s 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. Should you get out of bed and go read? Or should you stay in bed and do some belly breathing? What’s your view?
SB: Yes, so the sleep hygiene piece really recommends that you get out of bed if you’ve been up for more than 10 or 15 minutes, because the bed is really—you should be sleeping when you’re in bed, not lying awake and tossing around. But I really think that’s something that really will depend on the person, and how long they tend to be up when they wake up in the middle of the night. I generally will recommend giving it a certain amount of time doing progressive relaxation, belly breathing. Progressive relaxation is something that I really like for having people fall back asleep.
And then, if they can’t fall back asleep, get up, get out of bed, and either stretch or take a warm bath, or even read with very low light until they’re tired and then hop back into bed.
If it’s something that’s ongoing, that they’re having trouble sleeping and waking up in the middle of the night, then I really want to figure out what exactly is happening that’s causing that. Often, for women, as we hit perimenopause and menopause, women often wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble sleeping—and that’s a hormonal issue.
For some people, it’s anxiety that’s keeping them up. For other people it’s actually a health condition where they’re getting their airways blocked at night, and they’re not able to get into a deep sleep because they’re not getting enough air. It really varies from person to person, what exactly the problem is. But generally, I would say to stay in bed for about 15 minutes during the progressive relaxation. And then, if you’re not able to sleep, get up. And then, if this keeps happening, really work with whomever your doctor or practitioner is to help you figure out what the problem is.
TS: One of the sources of overwhelm that I’ve been hearing from people, really just to call a spade a spade, since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, is a sense of feeling emotionally overwhelmed by current events and by a fear of political instability and environmental instability.
SB: Right. Safety.
TS: Yes, safety. And this has people, in different ways, shaking in their boots and feeling emotionally overwhelmed. What’s your take on that?
SB: Yes, that’s incredibly important. I’ve seen, in the last two years, the number of people who I’ve seen experiencing trauma, basically, from what’s going on in the administration, and being triggered from their own historical trauma based on what’s happening politically, is significant.
I think that, for some people, it’s a question of limiting the amount of time they are exposed to it—making sure that they’re taking time for downtime to recover. And that can be not watching the news at night, or getting your news from sources that allow you to have some hope around what’s happening.
Because it really is, it’s a time of . . . We don’t know what’s going to happen. And it is a very scary time for a lot of people right now. And there are also many people who have lived under this kind of fear for a long time because of their circumstance, people of color, and people who have been suffering in one way or another. Even prior to Donald Trump, those people have been facing that for a long time.
I think more of us are now facing it because of the way that it’s growing. But make sure that you’re not drowning in it on a day-to-day basis, that you’re taking time for your own self-care, that you’re taking time to make the choices that line up with your values—and actually doing work. I talked to a patient the other day, and she was saying how she’s been feeling overwhelmed for those very reasons. I asked what she’s doing in her own life to help with the situation, or to help marginalized people, or to help with the upcoming elections.
She said that, well, she hasn’t really been doing anything. And we talked a little bit more about that. And she agreed that if she actually took some time to volunteer and to give time to people who need help, that would help her feel better and not so helpless with the situation.
But, whatever the things that you need to do to get your overall load down. Because obviously, that’s something that we don’t have control over—who’s sitting right now in the White House. But we do have control over what food we put in our bodies, and whether we go for a walk, or whether we go to counseling if we’re feeling anxious—and really making sure to act on the things that we can so we’re not already at the very edge of being able to deal.
It’s about making more room. It’s the bucket. That’s something we don’t have control over. So what do we have control over? And how can we act on those things to try to make some more room so it doesn’t impact us quite so much?
TS: The other thing, Dr. Samantha, that I wanted to talk about, is one of these tenets that I mentioned, of naturopathic medicine, which is the tenet that the doctor functions as a teacher.
I also found this really interesting, because I think sometimes we go to doctors, especially when we’re feeling overwhelmed with what’s going on in our life, or with our health, and we want them to fix us, not to educate us. And it seems like that’s a very different viewpoint.
SB: Yes. It’s part of what we do as naturopaths. I really want—and there are some who just don’t want to know, they don’t care, they just want to take something—I always take the time to say, “Here’s why I think it’s important to understand what’s happening in your body, and what’s driving your overwhelm and your stress and your systems.”
Because in order to be able to . . . There are going to be people who just want a pill, and that’s their choice. However, there are always things that people can do to feel better outside of just, “OK, here’s a solution.”
And the truth is, most people don’t. My experience—and it might be self-selecting in my practice—but my experience is that most people really don’t want a pill. They may, upfront, but then what they see is that that’s not fixing . . . then more and more things happen. I think that people are willing to take pills because they aren’t given other options. I don’t mean to take pills like drugs. I mean given a quick fix, I should say that. Because there are some cases where medications are obviously the correct approach.
But that people are willing to . . . People want a quick fix, in a way, but ultimately they know that they want to feel better, and that quick fix isn’t going to be the answer. And so I really work with my clients to understand not only what the accumulation of stress is in their lives, and where they do and don’t have control, to identify those things, but literally, exactly how the pathology’s happening in their body so they have a better reason to stick to changes or make good choices.
So if, for instance, someone’s blood sugar is high, I can give them a blood sugar . . . I can make them a prescription for them, and I may do that anyway. But to understand exactly what’s happening when you eat a carbohydrate, how it breaks down to sugar, what your pancreas does, what it means when you’re not processing sugar as well, and then what the long-term repercussions are.
Because ultimately, I think when I encourage patients to make choices that are lined up with their values, if they don’t understand what’s happening, they can’t possibly make that decision. If we just say to someone, “Oh, you should stop eating sugar, or you should stop eating gluten, or you should stop eating whatever that thing is, or you should go for a walk every day”—unless you really understand how it’s going to help, they’re much less likely . . . They’re much more likely to make the healthy choice over the long haul if they understand exactly why they’re doing it and how it’s going to serve them.
TS:You mentioned that you’ve worked with upwards of 30,000 people. And you said that the people who make changes, the people who have the mindset that gets them out of these experiences of overwhelm, are people who are resilient.
But when you think to the people you’ve worked with, your clients, if you were to describe . . . What is it? What is it about those people who are able to restructure their lives according to their true north? What qualities do you see in them?
SB:A great question. The first thing I would say is that I think that resilience is something that we can create and learn. And it’s not necessarily a quality that’s inherent in someone, in their ability to move forward with changes. I think it’s the people who are ultimately willing to take responsibility for their choices. And sometimes it takes time to be able to get someone to a place where they’re doing that.
But in the end, it is actually instilling this understanding that your body will do what it needs to do if you support it. We can be gentle with ourselves and still end up somewhere healthy. People are able to look at these things that they’ve tried to do for themselves and have not followed through with over time. That doesn’t mean that they’re relegated to that over time. They can, at any given point, turn around and say, “OK, what is it that’s keeping me from getting where I need to get?”
And that understanding that we can . . . the true understanding that we do have control in so many places, and then acting on that control, or acting on that and taking responsibility for ourselves and our choices—those things can get us where we want to go. And really believing that is the thing.
There are some people who really don’t get there because they do feel like they’re at the mercy of their lives. And that’s much harder. But being able to . . . For those folks it’s harder. But being able to say, “If I’m having trouble making this change that I want to make that’s lined up with my values, and I’m not able to make it, I need to look at what’s keeping me from getting there.” And then being willing to address it.
I’m not sure exactly what word I would use for that. Perhaps it’s a willingness. Perhaps it’s a willingness to look at what is keeping us from getting where we want to get. That’s really, I think, the thing that ends up being the most helpful for people to accomplish their goals from both a health perspective and a life perspective.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Dr. Samantha Brody. She’s the author the new book, Overcoming Overwhelm: Dismantle Your Stress from the Inside Out. Dr. Samantha, thank you so much for the conversation, and for starting off 2019 in the right spirit: taking responsibility for our choices. Thank you.
SB: Thank you so much for having me, Tami.
TS: SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world. Thanks for listening.
