Speaker 1:	É today's presenter Dr. Kimberly Burdine, who is a Diversity Coordinator in the UT Counseling and Mental Health Center. She has a Ph.D in counseling psychology from Oklahoma State University.
Dr. Burdine:	Thank you all so much. Thank you for that introduction. I'm happy to be here. 
Dr. Burdine:	All right, so how do you know when you're stressed out? And that's the real question I'm asking. Can't sleep? Irritability? Procrastination? I personally know when I'm maxed out on stress when I'm doing absolutely nothing, right? So when I'm like Netflix and I got a task list of 50 things, then that's an indication to me that I'm probably overwhelmed because I'm not actually functioning.
	But if you notice, how we know we're stressed falls into these four categories, right? So there was the physical symptoms, so not being able to sleep. Or some of the stomach issues and those sorts of things would be physical symptoms. Emotional, so the irritability, right? You're snapping at people or just feel maybe even sad. Some behavioral changes, maybe you isolate yourself. Or maybe you notice that you've become really really work oriented or really really friend oriented. And then the thoughts are big, okay? Sometimes for people, like when they're stressed out they'll think like, "I suck at life." Like, "This is so hard. I can't do it." Those are the ways that in our thoughts that these come up.
	When we think about the signs of stress it's usually different for different people, but they usually fall in these categories. When we talk here in a little bit about how to cope with stress we want to come back to these four areas to figure out what we can do to cope with it. We need to think about things that we can do that'll help us cognitively. We need to think about things that will help us emotionally.
	All right, why do we have stress? Most of us have heard of fight or flight, right? Maybe not. You will eventually in your course work. Stress is necessary. It's a good thing and remember I said you wouldn't want to live life without stress. I don't want this to be true for anyone but we need to be able to respond in a physiological sense if there is danger. Okay? If a lion came into this room right now we'd need be able to respond to that because we're probably in danger. And we need to be able to do that without having a whole lot of thought. There's just going to be some things that happen to us physiologically. There's going to be some things that shift in our thoughts and we're going to be able to respond to that.
	So we need stress, it's a good thing, but most of the time those life-threatening issues aren't happening but our body doesn't know that. So if you are in the middle of an exam, let's say for example or a presentation in your class, that fight or flight response might be kicked in and we have to train our body to just bring that back down and train our bodies and remind ourselves that we are not in that life or death situation. But we need that.  Again, we'll talk a little bit more here in just a second but it can cause problems if we're not really in danger.
	YerkesÐDodson law is a law about performance. It basically posits that there's an optimal amount of stress that we need in order to perform well. So if you don't have stress you're on this, maybe inactive or bored, or maybe the burnout and the breakdown, like when I said I'm just doing nothing because I'm just kind of overloaded. We don't really want to be on either end of those. Unless you're on vacation it's totally fine to not be stressed about anything, right, because you don't have any worries. But if you have an exam or a midterm or something that you need to be prepared for, you can't live in that thought, right, because you have to be able to perform.
	Optimally we're in this peak performance, where we have what you all talked about, that motivation. We have a healthy tension. That's going to motivate us to prepare for an exam. That's going to motivate us to train if we're athlete. Those things are really important. Where we get into trouble is if we cross that peak performance line and then we're too overwhelmed. So some of you might have noticed that this happened to you before where maybe you have an exam. You've studied but then you get in the exam and there's too much pressure and you can't actually perform. That would be problematic. But you want to have a little bit of pressure in order to perform well. So there is a sweet spot of performance and of stress.
	One thing I want you to walk away from with this presentation is that stress is a good thing. We need it. We don't want to not be with stress but we want to bring it into context.
	All right. How do we stay in that? We'll get into some of why a lot of you came out today. How do you cope with stress? Maybe we'll do that in a paired activity again. Think about what you already do. You also have a handout that has some different things that you can, so look through that if nothing comes to mind in terms of how you cope. I want you to think about one or two things that you do right now that helps you cope with stress. The reason that I'm asking you is that often times coping with stress, stress management, self-care, is something that we already know intuitively. It's just a matter of doing it and putting those things in place.
	So, why don't you turn to that neighbor again and talk about some things that you'll already doing or maybe some things on that list that feel like they might be something that you might to try. Anyone want to share? Maybe something that you do that's not on that list? Anybody have one of those that would like share?
	Zumba. Yes, so that's getting in your ... Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:	I'm okay.
Dr. Burdine:	OH, they want to be able to hear.
Speaker 3:	Yeah, we can't hear you on the audio, the video, if we don't have you on mic.
Speaker 1:	Okay.
Dr. Burdine:	Well, Zumba, yes, getting into your body. That's that behavioral that probably is emotional, too and physiological. What else, anybody else? What's maybe something that you saw on that list that you might want to give a try or you've thought about it and you haven't done it yet but you feel like it's a really good one that might work for you.
Speaker 1:	Speak to the box.
Speaker 4:	Okay. Well, this is what I recommend for others and I don't always remember it myself. It's important to take meal breaks. When I see some of the students walking, eating out of those trays, I think, "No, no, no. Stop and take a break to eat."
Dr. Burdine:	Yeah, and this is one of the things that I'm going to point out here in a second, but mindfulness is really what that's about, right? Taking time to do things mindfully. Paying attention to the actual taste. How does somethings actually feel in your fingers before you put it into your mouth? Those sorts of things are really going to help to bring you back into the moment.
	One for me that is huge, this is just kind of my self care, is gummy bears. You all are laughing but I'm so serious. I'm in love with gummy bears. They are my love language. It is my thing, but the thing that you want to be mindful of about what you choose to do for self-care is that it should be something that doesn't have the potential to cause more stress. Okay? So I love those gummy bears but I probably don't want to over indulge in that too much because it wouldn't be healthy and there's not a whole lot of nutritional value in that.
	As you think about things that folks do to engage in self-care and cope often times we're maybe doing unhealthy things or we're doing things that maybe aren't necessarily unhealthy but we're doing it in excess. And usually why that happens is and this is probably true or maybe not for you all, maybe you all aren't like this. Let's say you have two exams, three quizzes and a project due this week. And you gotta get it all done and you care about it and you're focused. So probably what you do is every waking moment you are dedicating to getting stuff done and being prepared. Then what happens at the end of that five-day stretch? What usually happens?
Speaker 5:	You're going to get more stressed out?
Dr. Burdine:	You're exhausted. Oh. You're exhausted. You crash out and then what happens? You end up taking a whole weekend and you're binging on Netflix and you're just, you're probably, because you resent it, right? You're like, "Now I'm gonna take all of this time." 
	Well some of the things that are really important to be mindful of is that we want to get into a daily practice of self-care. If you could just take 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes to an hour, and often times we're like, "We don't have time." Like, "I don't have time to do something to take care of myself." If you do that, the 30 to 60 minutes, an hour, it's 3 1/2 hours or 7 hours max that you have contributed that week as opposed to then on the weekend crashing and burning and then you've used up two full days and you're not getting anything done.
	In the short run it really is helpful to get in the daily practice. Mindfulness is really key. Usually when we are anxious we're outside of the current moment. We're usually thinking about things that are going to happen in the future or we're thinking about things that happened in the past. It's not that we don't want to think about those things. We definitely need to think about our future. We definitely need to be reflective on things that have happened in the past. 
	But when you are tiptoeing outside of that optimal level of performance we want to shift our focus to what we can do right now. What can I do in the next hour that's going to be helpful? I probably don't need to be thinking about getting into Med school and passing the MCAT when I'm tiptoeing off of that optimal level of performance. Okay? I want to bring my focus back into the now. What can I do in the next hour that will be helpful?
	A part of that too is values based prioritizing. Often times when we are stressed there is a potential that we're not really doing things that line up with our values. When you're managing stress your values might change from moment to moment or day to day. Maybe today the value is, "I have to study for this exam," so academics is going to come first. Maybe tomorrow it could be family obligations. Those values are going to change from day to day but it's really important to balance that and prioritize accordingly.
	As you're thinking about that daily engagement in self-care go back to those four areas. What are some things that you can do that will help you to engage your body? So the Zumba that you mentioned before would be great for that. What are some things that you can do to tend to your emotional health? Is it hanging out with your best friends? Is it connecting with family and friends those sorts of things? 
	Then cognitive is really important too. Shifting your focus back into that healthy thinking and some of what is there listed on the handout, thinking about bringing things in perspective, that's a cognitive focus. Perspective. What's important? What do I need to get done? What do I need to get done today?

Dr. Kimberly Burdine on HANDLING STRESS (12 min) 

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