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**Adam Stacoviak:** Right? So just yesterday we did an outdoor museum, essentially. It was an outdoor exhibit of dinosaurs; larger than life dinosaurs. We drove through it in our car, and it was in a mall parking lot. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right...? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Two weeks before that, when we had family here - I know it's early, but we went and saw Christmas lights. We did an outdoor drive-through of Christmas lights. Guess where it was at? A parking lot. So it's not a one-to-one, but it may be negative that the parking lots are empty... But it's a positive... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** I love it! |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So... Write that book if you want to. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** I love it. And that is so key, because part of our buy-in around these sort of challenges is going "How does it have purpose, or in what way does it provide meaning to me?" Because loss stings, any way you look at it; but at the same time, in what way can I find meaning within that, that holds... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** But if I don't go reflect and go, "I want to expand my mind to the broad view. I got to look bigger and wider", which - emotions are involved in that process. Because if I'm stressed, guess what I'm not going to be able to do? I'm going to see the itty-bitty, narrow, square view. Definitely no... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You know, the one thing that's interesting that she points out here is this vicious cycle; she mentions that new research is showing just how devastating this kind of occupational stress can be to the brain. Talks about resisting state functional MRIs... I think we might have talked about that in ou... |
So it was just sort of comparing these two... But this idea of this neurological dysfunction that can come from this vicious cycle; this long-term change that's stress, which we talked about in "I'm so stressed." But if burnout is sort of an umbrella of many things - you've got stress, you've got emotional fatigue, you... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[22:01\] Right. So we've talked about this relative to our amygdala, which is sort of the seed of emotional processing, and then our prefrontal cortex, which is sort of like our executive assistant in our brain. And the issue is that our prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for attention, ... |
So we've long said, but stress is really deleterious, or bad, just bad over the long haul for our bodies and our brains, because we're not designed to do that. This is fight or flight; if we look at stress, it's going "Do I fight, flight or freeze?", that's designed for a purpose, to help us survive really threatening ... |
And this is what was super-interesting... There's a neurologist out of the Department of Women and Children's Health, Ivanka Savic, who confirmed this, that our brains suffering from burnout - they don't just function differently, guys; the structure changes. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, you see sort of a regression, or this change inside of your brain from all these different things, like a growing or a shrinking of the amygdala, for example. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right. So this research \[unintelligible 00:23:42.25\] and took these MRI - so MRIs are super-fascinating, because they give us more access to the brain, in different ways... And so it looked at measurements of cortical thickness in the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex, and this medial ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well, life - we're all dying, so to speak... Life is a process, I suppose, to get to death, or some sort of fatal point... And some of us speed up that timeline or slow it down; they call it anti-aging. It doesn't mean you're actually turning around time, it means the way that your cells, or i... |
Yeah, it's interesting how there's this cognitive cost, too. Beyond just simply changing the brain's anatomy, she says scientists are beginning to understand how burnout can affect people's cognitive function; so disrupting their creativity, not being able to problem-solve so easily in dealing with working memory... An... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Oh, yes... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Hypochondria? |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** That's one of them, but I'm... See, now I'm blanking. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay. Maybe I'm okay then \[unintelligible 00:25:53.24\] But you know, you think you have something because you read about it. The doctor says, "Hey, don't go google this, because you will find things and hear stories... Here's what your real prognosis is; here's your real diagnosis", and they say "... |
\[26:21\] Anyways. So the point is - cognitive costs. It's not just simply losing your ability to function as well as you can, or having that constant chronic stress towards things that are sort of imbalanced in your life, but this inability to be as creative as you once were. And it kind of goes back to that - the sne... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. I think I've referenced this before, but this is part of what I love about the work that I've done and continue to do, is looking at -- I do evaluations for people who think they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and/or cognitive deficits, or sort of neurocognitive issues. A... |
And similar to that, people come in, "Hey, I'm concerned. This person is having memory impairments", which might look like a degenerative process, like dementia, and they had been severely stressed for a long period of time, and going "There isn't a sort of pattern which is consistent with what we would expect for some... |
So I don't want to scare people in any way about this, but I just want to give legitimacy to like you're not making this up, and then how do you move over into "Okay, if I know this is the case", behavior change - "What do I do different?" |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, the easy answer would be stop being so stressed. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** But that's very difficult. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** When you have chosen a stressful path in life, let's say a public figure, or someone who's in Hollywood, or famous, for some reason; singer, songwriter, actor... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Expert in the field of anything... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...rock star of anything, essentially, whatever accomplishment may have been achieved - you kind of think like "Well, doesn't stress sort of come with life?" And I think it does. But then you've gotta say, "Well, coping skills." But that doesn't change the fact that you are or are not going to be st... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[30:14\] Right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** But at some point, most people will snap, or hit their limit; there is limits to all ability to cope with something, I'm sure. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right. But this is why I would say, like with the awareness, to recognize before you hit the threshold of limits, right? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. So then the question I suppose is either how to deal with, or how to reverse. So if you can push back on it, what's the antidote to stress, as one of the examples of the umbrella that is encompassed by burnout? You've got fatigue, you've got psychological issues, you've got cognitive issues, t... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Well, so part of it looks like going "How can I reframe?" We talk about perspective-taking, and buffering. So if there are opportunities to take a reprieve... Do I need a day off? Do I need to step back? Or we've talked about time-blocking. Which sort of things -- like, what do I have charge o... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well, hopefully that's true. Right? There's the hope. Right? |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Hopefully that is true. Because just because it's a calendar new year doesn't mean it's the beginning. To some degree, it can be a psychological new beginning. It doesn't mean it's a literal -- I guess in this case it is a literal new beginning. But is that true? And that's the cynic in me, is chall... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right. And I'm going to challenge you and be like "But Adam, it has to do with your perspective." Because look, for lack of a better way to say it, and pardon my frankness, but it can suck. But if I am only focused on the suck, that is not going to enhance any positive emotions, because my bra... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, I suppose what I'm guarding against is the misleading fact that it may or may not get better from a pandemic physical world, is kind of what I'm guarding against. Because sure, like you said, it may suck, but I don't want people to enter or prepare to exit 2020 thinking 2021 is going to "be be... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right. And this is why I would say you can't only -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Perspective. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** More perspective, Mireille? Okay... Here we go. I'm ready. I wanna hear it. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[34:06\] Okay. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** This is not just for me, it's for the audience too, so I'm ready. Go for it. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** One of the things that we are taught as psychologists when we're learning to do assessments is that it's never prudent to use one data point. If I look at one test, and then go, "Yep, you've got that", that I'm banking everything on one piece of information, which might, and likely often prese... |
I think I've shared before my sort of negative association in the past relative to cardiovascular exercise, because it's rooted in being a gymnast as an adolescent, in like 110 degree heat in Arizona... And so that has never been like "Oh, yeah, let's do that." And not to mention the not breathing, struggling to breath... |
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