18: How Stress Ramps Up Your Jealous Brain w/ Dr. Cindi Ackrill

[00:00:00] Shanenn Bryant: Did you know that stress keeps your brain in automatic thinking and repeating your same patterns? That's the opposite of what you want when you're trying to create new habits or stomp out old ones. Your brain wants to keep you safe from danger. That's what it's designed to do, but overload causes it to get all out of symphony. 

[00:00:23] Shanenn Bryant: I'm Shanenn Bryant, former extreme jealous girl here on a mission to help you go from jealous and anxious in your relationship to calm and confident. And coming up, Dr. Cindy Ackrill shares some, science-based strategies to live stress smart ,stress strong, and stress wise. Ooh. That was hard to say. 

[00:00:49] Shanenn Bryant: Social media, reality, tv, advertisements, magazines, friends, family. It gives us a lot of targets to compare ourselves to, and I know I did this when I was really in the throes of my jealousy, where I would bounce stuff off of my friends and family to see. how They reacted or would, they be upset like I'm upset and really comparing those situations.

 I have with me certified wellness and executive coach, Dr. Cindy Ackrill Welcome to Top Self. Thank you so much for being.

[00:01:25] Shanenn Bryant: here 

[00:01:26] Cindi Ackrill: My pleasure. Um, it's a, it's a fascinating topic. I think most of us have been there, done that.

[00:01:33] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Yeah. you know, jealousy in itself is normal. You're gonna have maybe bouts of jealousy here and there, but you really connect this whole comparison thing with stress and you use some, science based strategies to handle stress. Can you talk about how the two are related, that stress, and when we start to compare ourselves?

[00:01:59] Cindi Ackrill: So they're both normal human activities. we have comparison to, that's part of our wiring to keep us safe because we want to compare whether we're okay versus Someone else, we wanna compare path A to path B, to try and decide which one we should take. So it's a very, very normal function that when it's overused, can lead us to jealousy.

[00:02:27] Cindi Ackrill: Jealousy is also a normal function. It can help to motivate us. Um, they're, intertwined and that's all well and good. If we're feeling good about ourselves, we tend to handle it with no problem. If we are tired, um, We've got way too much on our plate, or maybe we've just watched the news, Then our security is already challenged and we're coming much more from a, Am I Okay. I'm not sure I really am. Perspective and the comparison ramps up. That's the time when scrolling. Social media is a really bad idea, , because you already, in your mind, are working from a premise that you don't measure up and it's gonna be validated perfectly.

[00:03:17] Cindi Ackrill: Well, 

[00:03:18] Cindi Ackrill: And actually I've learned that that is one of my signs of stress. When I start getting more insecure and I start comparing things more, it usually means I need some self-care I need something that's gonna make me go back to being inside, out Uh, and it's a really, really good key indicator for me that, ooh, I need something right now.

[00:03:45] Cindi Ackrill: And it's probably not to keep validating why I don't measure up

[00:03:48] Shanenn Bryant: Uh, that's an interesting point. So it may be one of your signs that I'm noticing. I'm. Starting to compare myself a lot or see how I'm measuring up with things. I am probably stressed and I need to handle the stress piece of it.

[00:04:06] Cindi Ackrill: Right. and there's another part is what's happening to us. Our reaction depends on our wiring and it's a really critical part of our wiring to keep us safe because if you are driving along thinking. Something you're gonna do when you get to your destination and all of a sudden a car cuts you off.

[00:04:28] Cindi Ackrill: You wind up in the other lane, your heart pounding. You don't even know how you got there because your brain used its wiring to take over, took your hands, moved you over to the other lane. You forget what you were thinking about because all the blood went from your frontal lobe down to your legs so you could run from danger.

[00:04:46] Cindi Ackrill: It's really, really normal wiring. It's not really helpful with chronic stress. So when we're just every day inundated with things that we're spending our energy on that are depleting us or scaring us or triggering something for us, then we get worn out and we start using these automatic thinking patterns that are maybe not so helpful.

[00:05:12] Cindi Ackrill: So we get stressed, we move over to automatic reactions. We start making. choices in our thoughts and our behaviors that are probably less than helpful, then we feel less in control, less good about ourselves, which stresses us even more. So it's a loop we can get into really easily.

 about the intersection between how guarded we are and when we start to compare. Can you talk a little bit more about that? When we're not feeling good about ourselves, or we feel for some reason that we need to be defensive or, wary, as you say guarded. That means that somehow our stress reaction system has been triggered.

[00:06:00] Cindi Ackrill: Our brain's on alert and. Once that happens, it's pretty difficult to undo without specific practices, but once it happens, we are going to be much more aware of what's happening. We're looking for negativity. Our brains have a negative bias because it saves us, It's far more important to think a long, skinny thing in the road.

[00:06:23] Cindi Ackrill: Is a snake than a stick because the people who thought it was a stick didn't procreate. if it was venomous, , we have a very negative bias under duress. It gets even worse. We've all been under duress and actually I'm kind of grateful for it becoming a conversation now when we used to all sweep it under the carpet or wear it like a badge, But where I think we're starting to recognize when we are guarded and that when we're guarded, I mean maybe you're sitting in a meeting and. You're feeling a little guarded and somebody else says something and you think, Well, I could have said that. Or you start down this whole path that is not healthy and really makes you feel worse in the long run.

[00:07:13] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. If you start to think of all the, scenarios of, well, I, knew that, or I could have said that. 

[00:07:22] Cindi Ackrill: Yeah.We're really good at manufacturing stories, really good. Our brains love to make meaning out of things, and we create stories to validate them. So if your story involves jealousy, it's really easy to expand it.

[00:07:39] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, yes. I mean, if, think that something's going to happen or my brain is focused on something, almost no matter what, that's going to become your reality.

[00:07:49] Cindi Ackrill: And not only do, we make it become a reality in our choices, but our focus becomes so if I told you to look around the room and see everything that's blue, you would recognize the little blue vase on your shelves back there and the books that are blue. And if I switch it and say, I want you to notice the orange things.

[00:08:11] Cindi Ackrill: You would switch it and see those. So once we start on that path, our focus narrows that we see more of that and we see more of the things that should make us jealous or make us feel badly the stress mechanism is the actual wiring is to take the blood flow from our frontal lobe, because if you are facing this snake or cut it off by the cart, it's not the time to be able to think about spreadsheets or , higher executive functions.

[00:08:40] Cindi Ackrill: You need to react and react fast. So, Under duress, we lose some of the capacity of our frontal lobe, which is to modulate our emotions to know if we're okay with less access to that, we're more prone to the jealousy. And in fact, there's some studies that show that if you activate the left frontal lobe over the right frontal lobe, you can induce more jealous feelings.

[00:09:07] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, so talk to me more about that. bringing to the front one versus the other?

When we're under duress, our brains become a little cottage cheesy. All the parts aren't coordinated as well, doing the full symphony and it's like, The obos have gone crazy and the violins quit , it's just not this beautiful coordination. I mean, it's really fascinating All the things that our brain is doing at the moment, cuz it's also monitoring that we're sitting upright, that we're talking, that we're listening and all these other, digesting all these other parts. But when the symphony gets outta whack, certain parts will take over. and the left frontal lobe is associated with a lot of anxiety, jealousy when it's overactive in comparison to the other.

[00:10:00] Cindi Ackrill: A lot of the frontal lobe involves breaking activities and when the breaks are off, we get out of control. , and I assume then that's why we're reacting in those situations versus more of a thought out response to the situation.

[00:10:21] Cindi Ackrill: definitely your perspective narrows because it's important to see hear and smell the snake , so you miss the bigger picture that you know, Oh, I'm actually okay. You know, it's been a good week. This is a bad situation, but it's been a good week. I don't need to let that person's success challenge me or.

[00:10:44] Cindi Ackrill: compare my hair to theirs today. But when we don't feel well or where somehow other challenged or off of our ground, all of a sudden that hair becomes really important. Even though there's a part of us that knows cognitively, like, why am I doing it? It's almost like, you know, why am I doing that to myself?

[00:11:06] Cindi Ackrill: And yet you can't stop it.

[00:11:08] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can tell yourself a million times, like it doesn't matter and it's fine, and they're not paying attention to it. But then we focus on it and we take that inward for some

[00:11:23] Shanenn Bryant: reason 

[00:11:24] Cindi Ackrill: Yeah, we go for a little journey to the dark side , 

[00:11:28] Shanenn Bryant: Right. Well, I love that you're using, the snake analogy because I know when we're in relationships and we're jealous in that relationship, a lot of times we're thinking of them as the snake, you 

[00:11:40] Shanenn Bryant: know,

[00:11:41] Shanenn Bryant: they're sneaking 

[00:11:44] Shanenn Bryant: So I love that you're using that analogy, but I think it does make a lot of sense. when we're stressed out already, and that's the unfortunate part when we're going into situations, so maybe we're just going to dinner or we're going to the movies or some event, there is an element where we get stressed out just knowing that we have to do that and worried about who's gonna be there and what we're gonna have to. encounter or someone who may be threatening to our relationship. We think. So that stress level is already high. And I know you talk a lot about stress smart. So are there things that we can then do to lower that stress that we already know is going to, come with even just a minor thing, like, going to dinner,

 definitely. I kind of break it down into stress smart, stress strong and stress wise. And stress smart is really building up your awareness to know the first signs that you're starting to go off the rails. first started doing this work, I was doing a lot of applied neuroscience for different conditions, and I'm a migraine person.

[00:12:56] Cindi Ackrill: I will definitely get a migraine after the exams when the, you know, when I've really stressed myself out, I get the migraine. But isn't it smarter to abort that train reactions that's gonna land in a migraine? Back when my jaw was tight. Or when I was stuck in thinking. So by building awareness, you start to learn your own tools and your own skills to know when you're on your ground, when you're off your ground, you interrupt being busy to check in more.

[00:13:26] Cindi Ackrill: Maybe you tie that to another habit, like when you brush your teeth in the morning, you do a check in, you take some deep breaths. and just check in. How am I today? I rested? What do I need today? Who do I wanna be today? And what do I need to practice to take care of myself?

[00:13:41] Cindi Ackrill: we have a society that has not taught us how to take care of ourselves in the process of being grown up or having a successful career. We have a society that's actually rewarded us for the very thoughts and behaviors that undermine our. strength success is all about money. Success is having everybody happy with you.

[00:14:03] Cindi Ackrill: Um, success is the perfect Instagram profile, et cetera, et cetera. put a lot of stuff out there that creates, And feeds these stories in our mind. So just getting aware and noticing what story. Asking yourself a question in the moment. You know What's the real data here? They're sitting here, They said this.

[00:14:24] Cindi Ackrill: I'm sitting here. I said that That's the only data. What's the story I'm adding? Well, I'm adding the story that My husband's going to be more interested in her than he is in me. It's because she does blah, blah, blah, blah. We're so good , and we've read enough junk that we're really good . So what's the data?

[00:14:42] Cindi Ackrill: What's the story? What do I need to be? Okay. And who do I wanna be right now? I don't wanna be the jealous person. It actually doesn't feel good. Um, it's natural. I wanna have some compassion for myself because maybe things aren't great in my relationship and I I need some compassion. Right now that it's, not going well.

[00:15:05] Cindi Ackrill: hopefully your podcast will help some other people have some tools to realize this is part of it, and these feelings need to be honored. At the same time, you don't wanna act on 'em and make things.

[00:15:18] Cindi Ackrill: worse 

[00:15:20] Cindi Ackrill: Yeah. And it is where we go down this vicious cycle of beating ourselves up so much and feeling that guilt and that shame for having those thoughts. And you know, the thoughts are okay, it's really how are we then reacting to those thoughts? And you've given a few things where We can be proactive and relieve some of our stress, have maybe that daily We need to learn some skills to go with the uncomfortable. Feelings sometimes just to sit with them, sometimes to write them out.

[00:15:59] Cindi Ackrill: That can be really powerful if you just sit and write them until you look at them and kind of go, Hey, wait a minute, , this is a story right here and I don't necessarily need to be the star of that story. Um, there, there are many techniques, probably the most. Researched and powerful one is just slow your breathing down the stress reaction and getting in one of those loops, ramps up your sympathetic stress system, the fight or flight system that's gonna keep you in that vicious circle.

[00:16:33] Cindi Ackrill: And we Actually have a whole nother wiring system to complement it called the parasympathetic nervous system that you can activate to calm down your brain so you can use your body to calm down your mind. therapy's awesome. Been there, done it. We can talk through a lot of things and that's very, very helpful and sometimes we need to just physically get ourselves calmer to open up our minds.

[00:17:00] Cindi Ackrill: To being able to do something. So deep breathing can do that. there are all kinds of parasympathetic tricks you can do to bring that system back up, and that's gonna get the blood flow back to your brain so you can get your perspective back. You remember that you have some strengths, that you have some choices in this situation, and then it looks better.

[00:17:23] Cindi Ackrill: The more you practice those kinds of things, like practicing breath work, it's little bits and pieces that just keep reminding your mind of neutral. Keep reminded your mind of what matters to you and what lenses you want to.

[00:17:38] Cindi Ackrill: look at the world as opposed to the ones you feel like you have to wear.Jealousy lenses very uncomfortable. I sort of picture 'em as those thick, ugly glasses, Right. Um, I'd love for you to share maybe a few of those techniques because you brought up therapy and I agree. You know, there are times where some of this may be really deep, deep-rooted and people would benefit from therapy, but in a lot of these cases it's, something that's happened in the now.

[00:18:10] Shanenn Bryant: It's something that they have to deal with right now to be able to have a better response and. We can't duck out to have a therapy session real

[00:18:20] Shanenn Bryant: quick 

[00:18:20] Cindi Ackrill: Right

[00:18:21] Shanenn Bryant: in these situations. Yeah. So, um, yeah, we, you know, don't probably have therapists on speed dial. Most of us maybe, um, don't have that luxury. So can you share, I know you talked a lot about breathing, but are there some other specific things that we can do in those.

[00:18:38] Shanenn Bryant: moments 

[00:18:39] Cindi Ackrill: Yeah, I call them snap tools where you stop, you notice you adjust something and then you proceed. So you're taking a pause between what triggered you and where you're going. I think it's important to recognize people who've had real trauma don't necessarily have the luxury of undoing that wiring in real time the way they would like.

[00:19:02] Cindi Ackrill: So if you've tried this and it, you're really frustrated with. It may be something that's wired hard and you're gonna need to learn different tools for you. So please don't feel badly if you know, you're thinking, I tried breathwork and it freaked me out. Um, that may be because of what's going on in, in your brain and that's fine, but For most of us, really just slowing the breath down, putting the hand on your belly, rubbing your feet across the floor to feel the ground, putting your hand on your heart and breathing to that, to slow it down, rubbing your fingers together. you want to do something that is repetitive or humming.

[00:19:45] Cindi Ackrill: Humming is a really good one, or singing to something do keep your happy music on speed dial because music entrains the brain. You need something that snaps you out of the automatic reaction, and then don't yell at yourself because you had the automatic reaction. You're hardwired at this point, everything we learn to do is because our neurons talk to each other, They make connections, and the more we practice something, you know, if you're practicing the piano, you make Connections and eventually it gets insulated with Myelin so you can practice the piano and talk to somebody else at the same time. Well, the same thing happens for thought patterns that we have. It's just a really easy pathway and you can't undo it or say, No, no, no, I'm not going there. You can say, Okay, that's my go to.

[00:20:35] Cindi Ackrill: Thank you for keeping me safe. That's what you think you're doing. But right now I need to concentrate on.

[00:20:39] Cindi Ackrill: this Um, and I think that's a different approach than beating yourself up,

[00:20:45] Shanenn Bryant: Yes, and if we put as much practice time in as we do beating up on ourselves because that practice time is so important and I'm glad that you said it. Because we can try it once and go, Ugh, that didn't

[00:21:01] Shanenn Bryant: really you 

[00:21:02] Shanenn Bryant: work And, then we tend to give up and I certainly did that a ton of times where like, ugh, that didn't work and I'm just doomed to be this way because that didn't work.

[00:21:14] Shanenn Bryant: I tried that and I tried this and I tried that. But it's really getting to that, you know, they say, what, we practice, we do. And that practice then is so beneficial.

[00:21:26] Cindi Ackrill: I see your book in the background. Atomic habits, take practice to form and because what you're doing is wiring a different path, and if you want your brain to go down a different path, you have to keep reusing it so that you make more connections and insulate it. we have to learn to just interrupt our busy minds to check in.

[00:21:48] Cindi Ackrill: I mean, that's, that's a huge habit in and of itself to. Check in to see how I am right now. Otherwise, I'm maybe telling you stories. I didn't mean to share . we can go off track pretty quickly unless we have a little bit of mindfulness about what's going on with that. And it doesn't matter really what mindfulness practice you use, as long as you repeat it.

[00:22:16] Cindi Ackrill: And you feel calmer after it, or you feel more expansive or more creative because you've turned your brain back on, or you've made yourself a little more positive from it. So, you know, experiment play with self-compassion. And if you need to be guided, I mean, there's so many apps that do this, It's incredible.

[00:22:38] Cindi Ackrill: Um, I use one called Insight Timer, thousands and thousands and thousands of choices, and they have 30 day programs where you can try an affirmation every morning play until you find one that just consistently makes you feel better.

[00:22:54] Cindi Ackrill: and give it 30 days.

[00:22:56] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's important to note like not looking for these big changes in swings all at once because you know, you brought up the book Atomic Habits and they, talk about even just a little bit. I mean, if you're responding even just a little bit differently because of some of those things, that's progress and 

[00:23:19] Cindi Ackrill: It is. It is, and it needs to be celebrated because our brains luckily, are wired, that when we have success, we're more likely to do it again. So that's why tracking stuff works for us. You know, if it's a star chart, a Habit app, whatever you use. When we see that we've done it, our brain says, Oh, I can do that and I'll try it again.

[00:23:43] Cindi Ackrill: So, yeah, it, really is important to celebrate those successes and when you fall off the wagon, we know from the world of behavior change that most of us fall off the wagon at some point It's the important part of getting back on. I mean, even when we're doing breath work, sometimes I'm doing breath work and I realize, I just started to think about the grocery list.

 ability to notice it and come back and try again.

[00:24:09] Shanenn Bryant: Well, and I know you have a lot of background with neuroscience and you've been touching on a lot of, little pieces of how our brain works and, When I, was trying to work through this, I would constantly tell myself like, You're so jealous.

[00:24:24] Shanenn Bryant: You're such a jealous person. You're always jealous in these situations. You're gonna go and you're gonna ruin this and you're gonna be jealous. And I realized at one point for me, it was like, well, if I keep telling myself that my brain is going to make me, that, brain is going to prove that in some way.

it's funny because the research is just coming in that world about, you know, there's, I think a lot of it got locked away in the woo woo closet. You know, I'm going to manifest this in my life. If I just think about a million dollars, it's going to appear on my doorstep. It it does though what we think.

[00:25:06] Cindi Ackrill: Does change how we see the world and how we see the world changes, what choices we make. So yes, you may subconsciously be finding validation or seeking clues and that's going to fuel the fire. On top of which, once you go there, you are in that cycle of, that feeling is a stressful feeling in and of itself.

[00:25:31] Cindi Ackrill: And it may be perfectly logical in this situation. Um, you may be being betrayed, you may be out shown by somebody unfairly, and our brains certainly want things to be fair or they want to play out what we, how we thought it was gonna go, our expectations. So it's not. Your feelings are wrong. It's that you don't want them to affect your health, your happiness, and the future choices that are going to get you what you need and who you wanna be.

[00:26:09] Shanenn Bryant: If you want support sorting out all that noise going on in your head. Use the link in the show notes to schedule a free 30 minute chat with me to see how I can further support you. 

[00:26:21] Shanenn Bryant: Well, thank you so much for a wonderful conversation. 

[00:26:24] Cindi Ackrill: Sure, 

[00:26:24] Shanenn Bryant: you being here.

[00:26:26] Cindi Ackrill: my pleasure. 

Until next time, take care. And remember you're not alone.