Brave Men S2E21: Nancy Houston - Defeating Stress and Anxiety

It's Brave Man with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. I'm on with Nancy Houston, a great friend and one of the world's leading authorities on how to deal with stress and crisis. I mean, you actually work with as a psychologist, key people who deal with huge amounts of stress. So give me your little bit of your background and then I'm going to ask you some questions of how in the world am I going to make it through this whole thing. Yeah, well, that's a great question, Paul. Just a little bit about me, gosh, I have been a licensed professional therapist for about the last 20 years. So I've been on staff at a mega charge as a pastor and was over crisis marriages. So I have worked with lots and lots of people in crisis. I'm also a sex therapist. So I've worked with a lot of people, a lot of sexual trauma and just, you know, things going on in their lives. So yeah, great question. How are we all going to get through the next? Yeah. So you've helped people and those are some of the most difficult situations. You know, because your husband, Ron and Judy and I and you were all friends, whenever somebody asked us about you, I say, oh, yeah, Nancy's our sex therapist and Judy, that's when Judy hits me because those are stressful things, right, in people's lives. So let me ask you this, you know, there's a lot of people, you know, trying to just be upbeat. But I think the raw raw kind of wears off after two days and I've already eaten half of my quarantine food, you know, raw raw leaves. How do I deal with reality, Nancy? Well, Paul, I'm glad you asked that because honestly, what we really need right now are people who can attune to us. So if I say to you, Paul, I'm really stressed out because I am having to change a whole paradigm of my business right now, which I personally am, right? And so if you, oh, Nancy, it's going to be great. It's going to be fine. Don't worry about it. God's going to get you through. Well, that has not hit my target. I need somebody's going to empathize with me and say, yeah, that's hard. And that's a lot of shifting to do in a few days. And this is stressful and not minimize our feelings, but, you know, like, that's what I love about like David and the Psalms is like, he gets his negative feelings up and out. He expresses them. And you know, if we don't do our grief work, we end up being better, angry, controlling people. What do you mean by that? You mean because some things have died, because some things have changed so dramatically? It's almost like a death. Is that what you mean? Well, you know, Paul, I think when we talk about grief, we all think about like a death. But I think to be healthy emotionally and spiritually and relationally and psychologically, we have to grieve our small losses and big losses. So this week, all of our worlds have changed. We think twice about even going to the grocery store, you know, like they're saying that not to go see our grandkids right now. Well, that feels like a really big loss for me. Wow. Yes, it does. And just our regular ordinary lives have kind of been turned a little bit upside down. And so to just stop like on Monday, when I was having to cancel all my in-person groups that I do, my in-person meetings, I just realized I need to just sit down and let myself cry for probably about three minutes, and then I'll probably be okay. But to make time to do that is so important. Otherwise, we're just angry and bitter. We go into control mode. And then nobody really wants to be around us, you know, so we push people over. So control mode, boy, you've hit it. Maybe part of this, Nancy, you know, as we're looking, we don't know what's going to happen. So in a sense, we have no control. And if there's one thing we like as North Americans, is any Western culture person likes, whether we're in France or Peru, we like control, don't we? And we are controlling bunch, you know? How do I deal with that as a follower of Christ? So I do think if we let ourselves grave and then put some people around us who can just tune in to what you're feeling and even say to people, hey, I appreciate right now that you're trying to encourage me. Kind of what I need right now is just maybe that you could validate that this is hard for me. And that this is scary. For example, yesterday, I was on a group Zoom meeting because we're all going to Zoom. And you know, the leader of the meeting said, hey, let's all just check in. How's everybody doing? And one of the women got pretty choked up. She said, my mother is in a nursing home. And she's got Alzheimer's and she's so confused and scared and all I could do was look at her from outside of the window and watch her cry on her bed. And she said, and now they're even saying, we can't even come to the window. And so we just stopped our meeting. And two or three of us just said, hey, I can see the concern on your face. And this is scary. And I am so sorry. And I am with you and I think, I think you need instead of, you know, you can do all things through Christ. I mean, there's a time for that, but I think first we need to give people some of those relational ingredients that they need. So that is real community. So now there are most likely for anybody watching this right now, you probably know someone that you need to call somebody you need to speak to somebody you need to say, hey, how are you? I've probably called a dozen people in the last couple of days. Hey, how's your kids? You know, did they, did they get home, you know, all these different things are they working from home? So this is really maybe a time where we as the body of Christ can really beat community. In other words, you know somebody who needs not just to, hey, go get them. You're a tired, you're a chicken. Go for it. They need, hey, how are you actually? So yeah, like, so we have to go, exactly. We have to go beyond the lobby of the church, you know, we try to be, you know, hey, how are you? But it's usually, hey, how are you? Good. Hey, me too. Yeah, great. Boom. And then now we actually need to say, how are you and we need to listen? Yeah. And, and you know, I love to ask people, you know, how are you? And then I love to follow it up with, no, how are you really like, I really want to know how, how is the real Paul call, you know, what has been like for you, Paul, you know, because I've honestly, Paul, I mean, just as I note, I know I'm much calvall and I've had moments of feeling concerned for your safety and well-being, you know, so I'm glad to see you at home. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Well, I got one of the last flights out of Peru before they closed the nation down. So that was an amazing thing. But, you know, it's like my neighbor, Brett, I was talking to him today at social distance or what's that called? It was supposed to be. Yeah, yeah. Social, yeah. Social distance. Yeah. So we salute each other. And Brett goes, you know, he said, I've had a dry cough for a week. He said, but I always get one at this time of year where we live, it's flowers are coming out and stuff. So it's like, he goes, man, I had to keep myself from freaking out. You know, how do I deal with the fear issue and the stress it brings? And then the other thing that happens, I get mad. I was like, this is not right. Yeah, right. Well, Paul, you know, I think for all of us, it's different, but we have to really tune in to ourselves, like I noticed Monday by the end of the day, I was feeling stressed out. I'm like, okay, what made today different? Well, I'd read more news feeds. I'd turned on the news two or three times and I'm like, okay, I cannot do this. Maybe others can have whatever, but I, from my mental health, I cannot be just feeding myself this and losing my structure and just focused on this crisis. I have to have some balance in my life. So I remember I worked some crisis hotlines during 9-11, just, you know, as a public service. And I would ask people, hey, how much TV are you watching? How many times have you watched a twin towers come down and then say, oh, all day long. And like, please turn off the TV and take your kids to the park and go for a walk. You cannot do this to yourself. So you know yourself better than anybody, but you've got a monitor how much negativity you can take in and fear mongering and crisis and, you know, you just, our minds can only handle so much of that, Paul. Yeah, you know, the, the thing is the news media, by and large, newspapers, television, news, all that was losing viewers like crazy before this happened to the point where ESPN was even the sports channels were laying off people, Washington Post got bought and sold, you know, New York times have laid off people. And so over and over and over, the news media has been shrinking until the last seven or a day, and they could say, where the only place you can go for news and, and it's just become shrill. And the thing we have to remember is they're actually in business to get viewers. Yes. Right? Yes. So even the way they report something is it has been ramped up and we just have to, you know, I mean, I think we all need to be smart and be aware, but limit how much negativity you're taking in. You're a relational expert. And so how do I navigate? How do I navigate being around, you know, I heard this funny one the other day. And it was a guy who said, I've been working from home for two days. And already my wife has reported me to HR for sexual harassment. How do we navigate this? We're going to be really close a lot more than normal. How do I navigate that? How do I keep my personal space when I don't have any help me with this and see help us? I think we have to be aware of our own stress responses. Like I could tell Monday, I was stressed and so I got a little snippy with my, my sweet husband. Yeah. And I'm like, and so we've kind of talked about that like at different points, different days, we're going to be stressed by this. And how can we give each other just some grace and not take that personally, right? And respect each other's work schedules, even though we're both now working from home. And have some respect for each other's routines. And you know, check in with each other like, Hey, how are you doing? What do you need? You know, you seem a little tense. Are you doing okay? How are you doing with all this? But giving grace to each other because we're all probably going to have some snippy moments during this time, right? Whenever people get stressed, we get a little snippy. Yeah, I get, you know, I fly a lot and travel a lot and apparently, apparently, according to my wife, there are some snippy moments, yeah, yeah, right? But she's real good at saying, are you okay or, yeah, you know, do you need a bolus cereal or something? Yeah, right, right. Exactly. So yesterday, I just went for two totally random different walks and I was doing business on the phone and I'm like, you know what? Why don't I just go outside and take a walk? There's been keeping me in this house. I can go for a walk. And you know, I thought it was so interesting. I read a study by some professors at Stanford University and they took two different groups of students. And one group of students, they had them stare at the gray science building and another group of students, they had them stare up at a group of trees, beautiful, green, full trees. And then they had a student walk by and drop a box of pencils kind of in the middle of both these groups. Well, the students who had been staring at the gray science building didn't move to help the student pick up the whole box of pencils that the student had dropped. The students who had been staring up at the sky and the green trees, they all gathered around helped pick up the pencils. So it just was the point of that, the experiment was to say, you know, we've got to give ourselves neurological breaks and we can do that by going outside in nature. So I just want to encourage you all like, get out, take walks, take breaks, just like you take a coffee break at work, you know, or go to the water cooler and have a few, you know, visit with, with some of your co-workers, I can't do that right now, go out and take a walk, call somebody, really, really stay connected. Like some of my girlfriends this morning, we did a Zoom meeting and we just laughed about stupid things. Like, can I go get my hair colored? And, you know, and we just laughed and laughed, I'm like, oh my gosh, I feel so much better, you know. So it was one little meme that Judy saw the other day, she said, what's going to happen at the end of all, all of all this is we're going to find out everybody's real hair color. I know, it's terrifying. Okay, you mentioned something about schedule and a little bit before that, you talked about structure. Yes. I think in the midst of chaos like this, it's easy for us to get unstructured. Yeah. How important is that? Oh my gosh, we don't know this, but our structure is part of what keeps us all sane. Wow. Like, we have to, we have to put daily structures and routines. Now, you know, for two or three days, it's great to think, yeah, this is awesome. I get to work in my PJs all day. But after day three or four, you need to start getting up at the same time, having your usual morning routines, you know, get dressed, you know, put on some makeup, shave, you know, do things. So when you look in the mirror, you're like, oh, I look, I look human today, I, you know, and then, and then have, make a schedule for yourself and stick to it. Yeah. I, I, there was a friend of mine. I think it was, I can't remember if it was Carrie Newhoff or Ronnie Doss or one of those guys. They said that flannel equals failure. Right. Yeah. If you stay in your pajamas, you are not going to end up being sharp or on top of it. And it seems like a cool thing. But those of us who have worked from home for many years and I've had an office in our home since the late 90s, I guess, I've had, we have an office in the studio, but I do a lot of work here. And I've discovered that I've got to get up at a certain time and I've got to get at it at a certain time and I have to actually discipline myself. Paul the Apostle said, we discipline ourselves not out of hatred for ourselves, but out of love for what comes out of it. Yes. And so all true discipline comes out of love. We know that the father loves us, so he disciplines us. We discipline ourselves not to beat ourselves up in order for us to be better. And frankly, those of us who are healthy, let's say, of mind, healthy in our spirit and body. I think we need to be sharper than ever right now, Nancy, in order to be there for people who are going to have a really difficult moment, there's a, we have a friend whose wife has Alzheimer's and he's so concerned because he, like you said, can't be there, but she can't remember to wash her hands. No. She doesn't even know what that is, really. Even though if you talk to her, there's this conversant moments, and I think about those kinds of things, I think, you know, that's the guy I need to be strong for. And if I let myself go, you know what I'm saying? I care more about me than I care about him. It's like the person who needed 180 rolls of toilet paper. You know, if you need 180 rolls of toilet paper to make it through 14 days, you've got a bigger issue than the coronavirus. Yes. Indeed. Right. And what you're, what you're really saying is, I'd rather be okay and my neighbors not. Yeah. And I guess it's time where, where we, if you will, who are feeling good and, and feeling healthy and talking about these things, Nancy, with, with people like you, I think we owe it to them to be at our best, to get up, do your pushups, do your exercise. You can't go to the gym. Fine. I went and bought an exercise mat yesterday, I bought some other stuff. But Judy, Judy did an online workout, you know, we're going to stay healthy. You know why? Because there's people who, who can't navigate this, you know, so get out, do things, but keep the structure, keep, keep that, stay in the word of God, right? Yeah. Keep your mind renewed, Romans 12, too, says, says your life has changed by the renewing of your mind and the renewing of your mind comes through the word of God. My friend, Rod Anderson, said this, he said, faith comes by hearing, but so does fear. And I think that's the first thing you talked about is what's our intake? What's our intake? Right? Yeah. So navigating this, with walks, nature, all of this structure, I think these are all key. If you could give me one thing, you say, hey, don't forget this in the midst of all this, don't lose sight of this, because we're easily distracted by all this stuff. Or if you got a couple of things, what would that be? Well, you know, I just want to emphasize something you're saying here because, you know, whenever we do something kind for somebody else, you get, you get a dopamine hit. You know, even if you're walking down this, you're in the airport and somebody drops their ticket and you bend down, pick it up and hand it to them, your brain gets a dopamine hit. Wow. And so there's something about this social responsibility right now that is so huge that I'm not going to go to Costco 1000 rolls of toilet paper because then what about my neighbor? You're so right. And so like, I want to, I'm retooling my business right now so I can do everything online. And I'm thinking about my niece who works in New York and she's an actress and a singer and so she has no work right now. And I'm like, you know, I want to keep working in case I need to send her some money, right? Yeah. Yeah. And this is kind of how we all know people who are hourly workers who are going to be out of work. We need to be thinking way beyond ourselves that, you know, and how am I going to get through this? Your brain is going to be happier if you are thinking about, yeah, I need to be smart. I need to plan. But how can I think about others right now? And like you said, calling people reaching out, checking in because this causes hardships for different people and different ways. And so I think the first thing we can do is attune to others and be grace-filled and compassionate and kind and merciful and grace-filled towards others. And that's huge. That I think that's going to keep us all, well, help us all be the healthiest and come out of this better. I love that whole thing. It's like, it's like kick up your dopamine hit. Get a dopamine hit. Yeah. Right? Help somebody. They're God's happy drugs. Why not utilize them and do good things for others, you know? Well, you got the dopamine hit when you help somebody and then you get the next level which is oxytocin when you do something with a group of people helping some people, right? Oh, totally. Yeah. The bonding hormone. Yeah, the bond. The compadre chemical. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, just a few things that I think are important is you need people to contune into you. You need people who can give you hope and I don't mean, you know, that false hope or cheerleading but like, hey, Paul, I believe you're resistant. I believe you're resilient and I know this is super hard, but I also want you to know that I'm here for you and you're not alone in this. And that's it. That feels encouraging, right? That's what I mean by encouragement, right? And then perspective, like, you know, keep your perspective healthy. America, the world has gone through atomic bombs. We've gone through swine flu, Spanish flu. We've gone through all kinds of things and God is good. And he gets us through and there's things for us to learn in this process. And then just reality that you're going to have moments where you're stressed out, you're cranky and you're spouses and your kids are going to get a little whiny and people can get scared and where we just practice having more grace for ourselves and others and kind of go, yeah, this causes uncertainty and people are filling off balance and how can I just walk through this day with grace and love. And then practice having structure, you know, man, structure is good for us. You know, Paul years ago, they did a, they did some research on kids on a playground. And if the playground, you know, like big piece of property, right? And if the playground did not have a fence around it, then the kids would stay huddled in the middle. But if there's a fence around it, the kids would play to the boundaries of the playground. Because if we have boundaries and structure in our lives, we feel safe. And then we can explore our options. If we don't have structure and boundaries, we get scared and we start closing down and we huddle and we want to stand put the covers over our head and be like chicken little and say the world is caving in, you know, so my, so my children, if I'm a parent, I've got young children at home, I'm there. They, it's going to be healthier if I give them structure rather than say, hey, guys, you're home, whatever you want to do. If I give them structure, they're actually going to feel safer. They will feel so much safer. If you say, okay, kid, we're getting up now and then we're going to do, we're going to get dressed, we're going to breakfast, we're going to, you know, yes, and you have other days planned for them, just like if they weren't going to school or anywhere else. So the more structure we can give ourselves, our children, our loved ones, even our friends like, hey, how's your routine doing? Have you thought about getting back into some sort of new rhythm, you know, that'll help us all feel safer? You know, I was at the, I was at a grocery store yesterday morning and there was a young lady that was bagging my groceries and she was running back and forth between three different outlets or whatever the call checkstands. And I said, I turned to her and I said, well, how are you doing Liz? She said, man, I've had, I've worked 50 hours in the last three and a half days. That was in the last four days. It's a 50 hours. I said, well, how are you doing? She goes, well, first of all, she says, I'm really going to be happy with my paycheck. And secondly, it's, it's not been easy. And so I just want to tell you how much I appreciate you being here doing this and how much it means to me and to all these people. She said, well, thank you. And you know what I found almost every place I've been is people are like that. There's a sense of, okay, we're all in this together right now. It's sort of like independence day, the movie, when the aliens come and all of a sudden everybody who was against each other has to pull together, right, so that's against the aliens. Well, this is an alien, the coronavirus, but it is, you know, it is an alien. So for people like that, if we have those kind words and those kinds of things, that's going to help that person, that health provider, you know, we say, hey, everybody worked from home, but you can't do that if you're making the electricity happen. And if you're keeping the water running and, you know, just the little things, we go, hey, everybody stay home, except you and except you, except you. And the fact is there are people that need to be out and those who can stay home will, as we all know, flatten the curve, which I believe in. I think it's really smart, but I want to be, make sure I'm grace filled. So thank you for that word. I want to make sure that I have grace towards them at all times. Well, I appreciate you reminding us to thank the people who are out there every day. And they don't have the privilege of staying home. So thank you for that reminder, Paul. Yeah. Well, Nancy, thank you for all this stuff. I've written down three pages of the things. And when I write my book on overcoming stress, I'll put it at the very end. As Nancy always says, it'll be awesome to be a bestseller. And we'll take you and Ron out for, uh, for a bite of dinner or something. That sounds perfect, Maddie. Anyway, thank you for what you do and the people you're helping and, and the fact that, you know, over the last 20, 25 years, well, you've 20 years in practice, but 10 years to get to that point, 10, 15 years. Oh, yeah. And so thank you for all the hard work that put you in a place to be able to share. So, uh, practically, uh, what we need to do. So thank you, Nancy. God bless you and everything you do. Uh, my joy, I thank you for having me. We'll see you. Okay. You've just experienced brave man with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian men's network. Connect with Paul at C-A-M-N-D-M-N or write to him at Paul at C-A-M-N-D-M-N.