Sunday Pick: How to mentally reset when you’re stressed out (w/ Dr Jenny Taitz) | How to Be a Better Human

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
Happy Sunday, y'all. Elise Hue here. Today, we're bringing you a Sunday pick where we share an episode of another podcast from TED, handpicked by us for you.
It's hard to not feel stress at the state of the world today. So how can you cope with stressors without letting them completely overwhelm you? Clinical psychologist and TED speaker Jenny Taitz spends most of her days helping clients navigate through their stress. In this episode of How to be a Better Human, she shares with host Chris Duffy why she uses dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, in her work. Whether a cold plunge can help you snap out of your messy ruminations, and why doing a few tasks each day to practice for pleasure and mastery, can help improve your mood. How to be a Better Human is a show that looks in unexpected places for new ways to improve and show up for one another. If you want to hear more insights like this, listen to How to be a Better Human wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about the TED Audio Collective at audiocollective.ted.com.

**Chris Duffy** (1:05)
This is How to be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. And I'm very stressed. Why am I stressed? Because I have access to the Internet. Okay, I read the news. I know what's happening in the world. Also, I have young children and I worry about the kids. And then sometimes the kids need things in the middle of the night. So then I'm up in the middle of the night. So then I'm tired the next day and I still have to record a video making an intro for the podcast, but there are these deep dark circles under my eyes. And also there's so much work to do. And speaking of work to do, there's always more work to do. And there's also always more laundry and always more cleaning and always more groceries and always more bills to pay. There's so much stress and it all just keeps coming.
You know, all of us have stress in our lives. And some of us handle it in healthy ways and others of us may be in less than healthy ways.
So I think that I know that I need to, and I bet a lot of you also need to talk to today's guest, Dr. Jenny Taitz. She is a licensed clinician with a doctorate in clinical psychology, and she is the author of the new book, Stress Resets, How to Soothe Your Mind and Body in Minutes. Now, soothing my mind and body in minutes, that sounds pretty dang good. I would love that. The stressors are not going to go away. They're always going to be there, but maybe I and maybe we can learn some strategies to deal with them. So let's find out how to do it. To get us started, here is Jenny reading a passage from her book.

**Jenny Taitz** (2:25)
Let's take an example that unfolded in my house. One morning when my husband Adam was tired and rushing, not a good combination, he dropped a full carton of milk on the kitchen floor. Fuming, he cleaned it up rather aggressively and cut his hand on the cake plate at the bottom of our refrigerator. Unfortunately, we didn't have any bandages in the house.
So, feeling even more frustrated, he jumped in the car for a drugstore run.
Agitated and replaying his horrible morning on the way home from the drugstore, he then got into a minor car accident. You can't make this stuff up. Of course, I have plenty of examples of how I have exacerbated an already stressful situation. Years ago, exhausted and newly back to work after the recent birth of my second child, I began gnawing endlessly on my fingernail to the point where I found myself in the emergency room with an antibiotic-resistant infection that required minor surgery. If I had only paused, observed my stress-fueled urges, taken a few deep breaths, and tried one of the stress resets in this book, I'd have spared myself hours in the emergency room and multiple follow-up visits with an infectious disease specialist. I'm pretty sure you have examples of your own.

**Chris Duffy** (3:44)
I have many examples of my own, and we are going to talk about them. But first, we're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.
Today, we're talking about how to handle stress with Dr. Jenny Taitz.

**Jenny Taitz** (4:03)
Hi, I'm Dr. Jenny Taitz. I'm a clinical psychologist, and I'm passionate about spreading hope to a wide audience. So I often write about my favorite practices, and my most recent book is called Stress Resets.