Why You Feel So Overwhelmed & How to Fix It - Claudia Hammond

Key Takeaway

Overwhelm isn't just about having too much to do—it's often about the internal pressure to be perfect at everything. The antidote? Accept that your to-do list will never end (and that's okay), practice self-compassion instead of self-criticism, and reframe stress as excitement about things that matter to you. Start by writing down three good things each day before bed—this simple practice trains your brain to look for positives rather than dwelling on negatives.

Episode Overview

Claudia Hammond explores the psychology of overwhelm and provides a three-part framework for managing it: acceptance, next steps, and coping strategies. The episode covers why we feel more overwhelmed despite having more free time than past generations, the role of technology and perfectionism in creating pressure, and practical techniques like gratitude lists, cognitive offloading through to-do lists, and reframing stress as excitement. Hammond emphasizes that overwhelm often stems from internal pressures and unrealistic standards we set for ourselves, not just external demands.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why You Feel So Overwhelmed & How to Fix It - Claudia Hammond from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Claudia Hammond, welcome back to the show. show. show. Thanks so much for having me back. It's a pleasure. Okay, overwhelm, big subject. Um, really important one. Uh, I I um it's a reason why I wanted to have you back on because I definitely feel it myself sometimes. Just for the sake of clarity, how are we defining overwhelm in this discussion? Yeah, it's interesting because it's not an official, you know, mental health term, but it is a word we use a lot. I'm thinking of it as when we feel that everything is all too much, as if there's, you know, ever more to do, less time in which to do it, and we're just feeling completely overwhelmed by it.

And that could in the ends lead to uh people being burnt out and having you know physical, mental and emotional exhaustion and you know difficulty sleeping and persistent feelings of dread. But it needn't get that far. It could you could just be overwhelmed in what's going on in in daily life and that could be coming from outside because you have so much going on. You have perhaps caring responsibilities and you know you're working two jobs and and there's just you know too much on and some of it could come from within as well.

It could be internal pressures of you thinking you need to be absolutely perfect and do everything absolutely brilliantly. And it can be a combination of those two. Is there any reason to believe that overwhelm is worse now than it has been in the past? Well, it's interesting. The word certainly gets used a lot more now. Um we know that there are rising mental health problems particularly among some age groups. Um I think a lot of people would would say that they're more overwhelmed now. I mean, it's interesting when you look at uh time use studies back in the past, then people often on average have a bit more free time now than when those time use studies started and were done in the 30s and 40s.

But I think it's certainly something we feel now that we feel that there is this pressure. That's interesting. We have more spare time now than we did in the past or at least at certain points in the past and yet we feel more overwhelmed. My mind goes directly to technology, but do you have is there another explanation? I think it's a bit of technology. Um, but not completely. You know, I think it's too easy to try to blame everything on on phones and on social media.

I think that is some of it. You know, I think particularly when it comes to perfectionism and particularly uh perfectionism about image and and how you look physically, then there is a lot of good evidence about uh uh teenagers feeling that they're now making comparisons and others as well making comparisons with more people. But we've got a far bigger group we can compare ourselves against and find ourselves wanting against if we can see, you know, thousands and millions of people on social media as well as just the people that we that we used to know when we when we couldn't do that.

So I think that is part of it and there is that always on feeling. The boundaries between work and nonwork, work and leisure if you like are getting blurred. Um it may be harder to feel you can completely switch off. You can be you know contacted at any time. There's all those things. Um and but I think as well there is just a sense of of pressures around us. I think there's a real sense at the moment uh that many people are experiencing where they're feeling overwhelmed by the news by what is going on in the world.

And of course, you know, bad things happened in the world in the past as well. There was there was often all sorts going on in the world. Um, but it does feel a lot of people at this moment will say they feel that lots of things seem to be going of things seem to be going wrong all at once and that they feel a bit more hopeless about the future and particularly with climate change as well. So I think there's lots of external things going on that are not to do with phones as well.

Fair point. I I can imagine um some people listening to this and thinking are there not times when overwhelm is necessary given you know exogenous factors like a sick kid or a sick parent or what what we may compute as emergencies globally that we want to get engaged in. Um yeah so is there is there a defense of overwhelm? Yeah, I mean I think in a way it's right to be overwhelmed by the idea of climate change and what might happen to the planet if we don't do something about that.

You know, that is an overwhelming existential thought that inevitably overwhelms us. And there will be certain times of life when people are going to feel more overwhelmed than others and those hopefully won't last forever. You know, children don't stay tiny forever. Um, and hopefully some of those things uh will change. But if it's that kind of external overwhelm, then what we need to look for is strategies to cope with that. If it's a more internal kind of overwhelm, then there are are different strategies where perhaps we need to be changing the s changing the standards that we set ourselves.

Um, and really trying to understand ourselves and why we're feeling the way we do and to then look at what we can do about that. Yeah. Okay. Well, so your whole book is dedicated to what we can do about that. Um, and there are three parts. We're going to kind of sache through all three parts here. Um, the the first is acceptance, which um may sound a little um passive to some, but actually is uh extremely helpful. One of the things you recommend under the rubric of acceptance is, and this is actually the chapter uh the title of chapter one, your to-do list will always be there and that's okay.

Say more about that. Yeah, I mean in one way that sounds like a kind of a depressing thought and you think, "Oh, I'm going to be overwhelmed by my to-do list forever." But I think there are certain things we we need to accept. And one of them is that to-do lists will always be there. So, it's possible that you get through your to-do list in one day, but the next day, if you've got to the end of it, there will be some more things on that list.

And that that's okay. And the reason I say it's okay is that if you've got things to do, that is a sign of a busy life. That is a sign of an engaged life. And many of those things that you've got to do, I mean, many of them are boring. You know, they're boring admin, but even if you're booking something, you know, you're reserving something that's boring, but it may be that you're reserving something that's going to be fun in the end. You know, you're booking to, I don't know, go for a meal or some something nice like that, that these are signs of a busy life and things that we need to do.

And that we shouldn't feel oppressed by our to-do lists. And we shouldn't feel we've necessarily got to get through it. You know, that there are things that we can um delay. we haven't got to answer every single email and some emails if you don't answer them kind of go away and people will come back to you if they really need a response. I mean I'm not saying don't answer any of your emails but that if it's urgent somebody will get in touch with you again and some things get resolved before you've got round to um answering which is quite nice.

Um but also to-do lists can be uh beneficial. So, there is research showing that if you do a to-do list that you actually write down, you could write it in your phone if you can resist social media and everything else that might keep you awake. Um, or write it down on a piece of paper, but that if you write down what you're going to do next day, you're cognitively offloading it. You're getting it off your brain and people are able to get to sleep faster. If they make quite a decent list, people will get to sleep um in the studies 15 minutes uh faster.

And so, that's that's a nice 15 minutes instead of lying there, you know, trying to get to sleep maybe. I love a study. It's kind of amazing because it's almost like mind readading. But um there's a study where if you put people in a brain scanner and look at the activity going on and you give them a list of faces to remember and a list of architectural drawings of buildings to try to memorize. Um and those activate different areas of the brain. So you can tell which people are thinking about in a way.

And then they tell people that they're going to get a reminder later on about the faces. They don't have to remember those now. then uh you can actually see the change in the brain activity as the brain offloads the faces bit and stops the activity in that area um because it can kind of um delete that. It doesn't doesn't need to do that anymore. That's extraneous information. And so writing things on lists does help us to offload it and not have to try to remember those things.

And that's why if you're going to try this technique at night, it is important to actually write those things down. If you just go through in your mind all the things you've got to do, then your mind uh thinks these are these are things I must remember. I must concentrate on remembering these. Um and that might have the opposite effect from the one you want cuz that might make you feel more stressed. But I think it's interesting because you think in a way that thinking writing down a list of what you're going to do before you go to sleep would be the last thing you'd want to do because it would make you feel so busy, but it doesn't.

It can be it can be really used to your benefits as something to to offload and let you sleep and let you relax. Speaking of lists, um you also recommend gratitude lists. Can you say more about that? Yes. So this is in a way one of the most popular interventions that has been within psychology and well evidenced as well. Sometimes it's called gratitude lists, sometimes it's called three good things. And the idea here is this is there a different type of list to do before bed.

And I'm not saying do them all. Choose the one you like. Um and this is where you write down three good things that have happened that day. And then think about why those things were meaningful to you, why those were things you um enjoyed. Um, and this is research that that came from uh the sort of, you know, godfather of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, and also Chris Peterson. And they got people to do these lists. And a month later, the people who did the lists had higher levels of happiness and decreased depressive symptoms versus a control group who wrote about um their early memories or three things they were looking forward to.

And I think what is so clever about this and I tried this out myself during the pandemic during during one of the long long lockdowns. Um I thought I'm going to try I was miserable and I thought I'm going to try this and uh and obviously there were limited things um to um that you could do in a day that were nice then but however there were still three things and so you soon start looking out for things to put on your list. And so you, I don't know, have something really nice for lunch or somebody says something at work that makes you laugh and you think, "Oh, I could have that as one of my three moments that I enjoyed today." And it makes you start looking for the positive.

And I think that's why it's so powerful rather than the list itself. It's that it actually changes your thinking during the day because you start thinking, well, what am I going to put today? And you want it to be a bit different from yesterday. and you look out for things and that tries to counter that counters the the automatic, you know, negative bus we have to to notice things that are negative more. Um, which we need to do because you need to notice if a I don't know, if a cat's following you up the street, that doesn't matter.

If a lion's following you up the street, that really does matter. So, you need we need to notice the negative to stay safe. But the trouble is that can make us feel miserable. And we don't always notice the positive things that are going on. You know, if you if you show people a a photo of a crowd of people and there's one happy face and one angry face, people are much faster to spot the angry face than the happy one. And we need to be, but it means sometimes we need to counter that a bit by by looking for some positive things.

And this these um lists of three good things really help you to do that. That's great. I do that myself. Just to reset for the listener, we're talking about uh Claudia's three-part recipe for handling this pervasive sense of overwhelm. Um the first part is acceptance. Within acceptance, uh there are a bunch of uh subcategories. We've just been talking about the fact that your to-do list will always be there and that's okay. Another aspect of acceptance is acceptance is acceptance is kind of your your Jeremiah against perfectionism.

There's a chapter called the search for perfection is feudal. Can you unpack that? Yeah. I think, you know, we have this idea that in the future we're going to be better versions of ourselves, that we're going to be more organized, we're going to try really hard, we're going to be more successful, we're going to have more spare time, and we're not going to be as tired. And and we know that perfectionism is on on the rise. Um there is research about that. Um people more people are agreeing to statements such as you know it makes me uneasy to see any error in my work or I must work to my full potential at all times.

And so it appears that gradually we are holding ourselves to higher standards. And the problem with this is it's well evidence that uh people who have extreme perfectionism have more of a fear of failure. They feel insecure. They blame themselves if it goes wrong. And this can be exhausting and demotivating. And yet perfectionists don't do any better at school or at work. Um and in fact they're more likely to overwork and and to burn out. Uh if you think of extreme perfectionism, there was um a meta analysis.

So they bring together all the best studies and they followed people for up to four years and they found that extreme perfectionism was associated with more depression, more anxiety, um more eating disorders. And we often have these kind of future selves who are superheroes. We think we should be able to be good at everything and that we can do everything and it's simply not the case. You know, humans have have succeeded by specializing and we don't have to be brilliant at everything. You know, you don't have to cook amazing meals as well as being amazing at your job and staying as fit as possible.

You know, it's nice if you can stay as fit as possible, but we don't have to look a certain way, for example. Um, and that it it can really parm us. And this this is perfectionism that that comes from within where we've got this idea that we must be perfect if you like. must be we must be perfect if you like. And I think it's really troubling that that is that is on the rise when it doesn't help people to be happier and more successful. more successful.

more successful. And yet you also argue that that overconfidence is is not good. Yeah. Totally. And I think I think um this is an interesting one the overconfidence because in one way we're often told yeah you need to be as confident as possible. you need to, you know, fake it till you make it. Exude that confidence and it'll all be great. Now, there are benefits to appearing um confident, but also again, we don't have to excel at everything. And we don't have to think we should.

And sometimes too much confidence is not a good thing. And you know, I love these these these things about the number of people um in a Yugov poll um 23% of of men think they could win in a fight with a king cobra with their bare hands, you know, no weapon or anything. 38% think they could beat an eagle and 7% think they're going to win in a fight to they're going to win in a fight against a grizzly bear. Like to wish them good luck with that one.

Um and another study found that, you know, people were really confident about being able to land a plane if they had to um without an instruction. And then they even showed people a a video um from the back of the cockpit of um a pilot landing a plane. Uh there was no sound on it. you couldn't uh see the pilot's hands, so you couldn't actually see what they were doing. Um, and yet even more people then felt they would be able to uh land a plane.

A pilot who watched this video said it was 100% useless in terms of that. And there are, you know, occasional stories. Um, there was one in Florida of a of a guy who did land a plane, but he had air traffic control talking to him and it happened to be someone there who was also a flying instructor and they talked him down and he did it brilliantly. But a lot of the time we don't, you know, and we we can't do these things and yet we believe we can.

And then I think that sets us up for more disappointment if we're if we're over um confident. Um and we even pretend to know things we don't know. You know, I like this study where they ask people, "Have you ever heard of chlorerine or the plates of parallax?" And 40% of people would say yes, they have. When they were in a list of scientific um terms, then they'll claim to have have heard of these. Um, and we don't even like, you know, asking the way. We don't mind at all when other people ask us the way and we understand that they're new to the area they don't know.

We don't think they're stupid. And yet, many people are reluctant to do that. And this kicks in really early. You know, experiments with 5-year-olds show that they don't like saying they don't know something um because they they already know that reputation is important when they're so young. And I think this this adds to the pressure that can overwhelm us that we feel we've got to be brilliant um and often overestimate how good we really are at things. And I think what we need is a kind of expansive realism of of who we are, what we can do, and and to accept that that that's okay and that we're good enough.

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So this year, don't rely on guesswork. Get your data. Track what matters and make resolutions based on your biology. Own your health for $365 a year. That's a dollar a day. Learn more and join using my link. Visit functionhealth.com/happier functionhealth.com/happier functionhealth.com/happier or use the gift code happier25 for a $25 credit towards your membership. A two-part question. the expansive realism you're describing is that I imagine that would be go good for both overconfidence and undercon underconfidence which often expresses itself as perfectionism and if I'm right about that how do we achieve it yeah I mean this is very true so it is a it's a question of trying to trying to get the right thing and you know there are some people who are very it's trying to get the right balance there are some people who are very underconfident and you know one of the the chapters is about you know no one else knows what they're doing either that um uh there are a lot of people who uh experience what's known as the imposter phenomenon common commonly referred to as imposter syndrome that they feel everyone else knows what they're doing and and you know people like you know David Bowie and Maya Angelou said that you know Einstein said that uh they felt they were imposters but of course we all think that well they're the you know they're all clearly amazing so we think that they're they're not imposters but that we're the real imposter you know they're fake imposters um and I think um in order to to kind of deal with all these things um and to try to get the right level of what we can do when it comes to the overconfidence.

I'm really interested in in some um work on there is on humility. Uh Daryl Van Tongeran and um uh who's in the states has done really interesting work on humility almost feels like a bit of an oldfashioned thing these days but that actually there are there are real benefits of that. Um and in fact people value friends who are humble um and and romantic partners um in particular who are humble and and actually like them better. there are advantages um to being humble but also I think we need to uh realize say to to deal with the perfectionism that success doesn't just just come through wanting it more and I think we get told that a lot you know if you really really want it you can you can get it you can be a pop star or winon or whatever it is you want to do if you really really want to and there's a real survivorship bias going on there you know we we uh you know we hear tennis players are interviewing you they win the US Open and they're interviewed and they'll say, "Oh, this is something I've wanted since I was so young." And maybe loads of I wanted to win Wimbledon.

You know, loads of us wanted to but weren't talented and weren't prepared to put in the many, many thousands of of hours and hard training as well. Um, and you know, Oscars will um winners of Oscars, actors will say that they've dreamt of this since they were children. But of course, we only see the the survivors, if you like, the successful people saying this. we don't see the thousands of people who also wanted to win an Oscar and be an actor and who didn't get to do it.

Uh which makes us feel bad if when we don't you know get to do those things. So I think this realism is about realizing what are we actually good at? What are our actual strengths and focusing on those and not trying to be good at absolutely everything and kind of giving ourselves a break. We say much meaner things to ourselves than we would ever dream of saying to a friend. And I call this the kind of would you say this to a friend test. Whenever you're having this kind of negative selft talk to think well would I actually say would I actually say that to somebody else.

No I I wouldn't you know I wouldn't be that mean. I' I'd give them a break. So I think we need to give ourselves a bit of a break and that will take a bit of the pressure off. So to my mind and and you should feel free to push back at this, but much of what we've just been talking about um whether it's underconfidence or overconfidence, imposttor syndrome or uh savior complex, you it's it's all about what the Buddhists would call comparing mind. You're comparing yourself to other.

It's about status. Um, and for me, and I believe you write about this in the book, for me, one of the most effective ways to handle this, because I suffer from this too all the time, is um self-compassion, which is a um kind of bland term. Um, and I sometimes joke that it sounds like vaguely autoerotic, but it's it's just the ability to to kind of take what you just said, would you say this to a friend, and and then talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend?

And so I just be curious to see how all of what I just said lands with you. Oh, totally, totally. I think loads of this is about self-compassion. And, you know, there are really nice exercises. is you know there's one um on um uh called sort of compassionate selfouch which it sounds even more dubious but where you you know put one hand on your your chest say and one hand um on your on your belly and and you take a couple of deep breaths and and you think bring to mind something that's that's bothering you perhaps a mistake that you've made perhaps you've made a mistake at work and it's really bothering you and you spend a moment thinking I've tried my best I am you know I am human I won't you know I'll I'll learn from this I won't do this again.

But I was really trying and this is what a friend would say to try to reassure you in that sort of situation and to just say, you know, we're all human. We all fail sometimes and this is me and that's okay. And this doesn't mean I'm bad. This doesn't mean I'm bad at everything and always will be. It means that one thing happened and we can deal with one thing happening. Yes. Amen. I do this all the time and as I often joke, um I don't want anybody to see me doing it, but I do do it.

Um yeah yeah yeah in under acceptance. Another thing you talk about is the fact that not all stress is bad for you. Meaning that um we don't need to have an allergic reaction every time we feel stressed. Oh this is overwhelm. I need to pull pull myself out of this tail spin. So I mean this and this can be a little counterintuitive based on everything we've just discussed. So uh I'd love to hear more from you about that. Yeah, we don't need to to banish all stress and in fact there isn't a way of banishing all stress and but in fact it's more than that.

We need stress in order to perform well. You know, we know that nerves sharpen our thinking. Uh they help us to focus. But I think the word stress has a bit of an image problem because we tend to think of distress whenever we hear the word stress. But there have been so many interesting studies about how you can reappraise stress. And they do these really mean studies. Um it's one version is called the Trier social stress test where they suddenly tell people they're about to have to give a talk in front of lots of people and that it will be um assessed and evaluated and the people who are evaluating their talk will stay there with a sit there with their arms crossed stonyfaced giving no encouragement at all while you try and falter your way through this talk that you didn't know you were going to have to give.

And this is to make people feel as stressed as possible. But they do all sorts of clever things beforehand. Like one group will be told to say out loud I am excited while another group is told to say I am calm and to try to believe that beforehand and then when they give the talk the excited group's talks are rated as more persuasive competent and confident and so what we need to do is reappraise even if you notice you know that racing heart that you might get because I don't know you're at a wedding and now it's your turn to give the speech and your heart is really racing and you feel really nervous and you think I hate this I don't want to feel stressed like this rather than try to banish it is to reappraise it and to think no this stress is excitement you know I'm feeling excited here and the reason I'm feeling excited and I think this bit really makes a difference is because this matters to me and so you're doing something at work that's difficult and you feel really stressed the reason you feel really stressed is because this really matters to you and you want to do it really well but you can turn that stress to your to your advantage and lots of studies will show this this works and they've done you know there was a study with teenagers in America they were 15y olds taking biology ology exams and then they they told them beforehand they gave them a paragraph to read about the benefits of stress and how this can sharpen your thinking and help you to concentrate and help you to do well and I thought it was really interesting this one because it made a particular difference to the students from lowinccome background they got higher marks when they were told about the benefits benefits of the ner of of having these nerves and how this could really help them.

So you can sort of reframe that racing heart as thinking this is a challenge um and if it goes well you're going to feel um a real sense of achievement um and purpose. Um and people with this it's called a a stress is enhancing mindset rather than the idea a mindset that stress is debilitating um even have a more um adaptive profile of the uh hormone cortisol. Um and so it will rise and fall because we need it um it will rise and fall to help them them through it.

You know, sometimes you'll see on TikTok and all sorts of things people saying they want to, you know, banish cortisol forever. We don't want to banish it. We need it in order to get out need it. We need it in order to get out of bed in the morning and get up because that's quite a shock for the body going from lying down asleep to standing up and doing stuff. So, we do need it. Um, and it can help us. And, uh, Ali, who's at Stanford, a psychologist doing amazing work there, showed that we can just a showing people a few videos about this can change people's uh, mindset.

And even months later in a company, she found people still were able to have this stresses enhancing mindset. So I mean there is a weird paradox with stress because having some is good. It's useful in those sorts of small situations. But of course we also know that chronic stress is is harmful to the body in in lots of different ways. Um you know it's harmful to our cells. It's harmful to our cardiovascular systems. Um it's harmful to our brains. It's harmful in lots of different ways if it's if it's chronic.

when it is for for certain occasions when we're doing things then we can we can embrace that stress um and I I've certainly found that knowing that stress you feel stressed because it's about something that's important to you uh which may be your children you know maybe that you're you know you're stressed cuz your children are stressed and or unhappy and you're trying to sort that out one of the reasons you feel stressed is that this is something important to you and it's almost comes back to the self-compassion again the sort of accepting yeah I do feel stressed about this and there's a reason for that it's because it matters so the first part as mentioned of of your recipe for um dealing with the the feeling of being overwhelmed is acceptance.

The then there's a whole section on next steps and it starts with um a discussion of procrastination. Um curious why you started there and and what we should know. Yeah, I just think that procrastination is something again people kind of beat themselves up so much for cuz they think it, you know, means they're a lazy slacker. You know, a lot of us will um experience this and again this is something that we can look at very differently that sometimes it's seen as a a time management problem and people use you know strategies that might help them with that but actually it's more of um an emotion management problem.

Um and research has shown that it is often to do with the fear of failure at a task. So you might put off something in particular because it makes you feel uncomfortable. you think you won't be very good at it and so you do everything else instead. You know, you put washing on, you clean the entire house from top to bottom, you do all sorts of things that aren't as urgent as the task you need to do. Even when that causes you more trouble later on because you haven't you get in trouble because you haven't done what you needed to.

And in the short term, of course, we feel better. Uh which is why we do it because if we postpone this thing we didn't want to do, you know, I I talk in the book about I postponed for a long time writing a will because I didn't really want to think about it. I didn't want to think about that I'm going to die and what what what to do. Um, and so I just put it off for for years. Um, but it was always there on that to-do list on my phone and I got in an app, you know, waiting for me to do it, but I wouldn't get round to it.

But I would feel better every time I postponed not doing it, postponed it because temporarily you feel better in the short term and that's why we do it. Um, and again because we often have these unrealistic views of ourselves in the future and these standards we're holding ourselves to. So we even we genuinely believe that we will do these things better if we do them in the future rather than doing them now. You know we we believe that in two days time we'll have more spare time.

Why will we have more time than to you know in two days time than today? Unless it's the weekend and you're genuinely free then we probably we probably won't. So um and so that's why I wanted to to look at procrastination as something we can we really can tackle and and something that makes us so unhappy in a way. So what are your thoughts about how to tackle? Yeah. So there's all sorts of things. So one is I think to to recognize that you do it.

Um and there were studies with uh German students where they um reminded them of uh their past resilience, how they dealt with setbacks before and they sent them two texts a day for two weeks asking them what they were attempted to postpone that day and what the consequences might be. So one is to bring to mind that you're procrastinating rather than um ignoring it. You can try all sorts of practical things like um laying out your desk at the end of the day so that the thing you need to do first is there.

Lots of people recommend, you know, not turning on your computer and then looking at your emails first cuz that usually gives you some more work to do. Uh but to do the most important task first, you know, sometimes this has been called in books, you know, swallowing the frog. Do that. Do the most important difficult task straight away. um disabling alerts, muting your phone, but also accepting that some parts of a task are difficult um and that that's okay because that's going to get you to the thing you want and and try to turn it into a challenge.

Break it down to smaller parts is one that is is often recommended because we know that immediate rewards are more um motivating. And then there's specific strategies people may have come across like if then strategies where um if a friend might suggest you know having a mid-m morninging coffee and that's going to then you can't resist that and that's going to distract you from what you were going to do that you decide in advance if your friend suggests that you're going to suggest meeting them after work instead.

And and research shows if we do that we're two or three times more likely to um stick to our to our goals. So you can have these strategies strategies ready. Um, another is from research and and everything I do in this book is evidence-based. I'm obsessed with evidence for these things is to um form a concrete picture in your mind of the thing you've got to to do. Um, and then to look for any pleasures in that. So perhaps you're really stressed cuz you're throwing a party and there's tons to do and you're putting it all off, but try to think, well, I'm going to take pleasure in the separate tasks.

I'm going to uh, you know, that one is choosing the music and, you know, that that could be quite fun or reframing it. So the big job of clearing the loft instead you of clearing the loft it's sifting through life's memories and that sifting through life's memories might feel uh like a more positive um thing but again not being too hard on yourself. There was a study which found that students who didn't do enough revision for their exams and then didn't do very well in their exams actually did better in their next set of exams if they forgave themselves for having procrastinated rather than for beating themselves up about it which made them more likely to in fact do it again.

Right. Back to self-compassion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We talked earlier about a major source of overwhelm for folks, which is um the news. And you have a bunch of thoughts on how to not let the news overwhelm you. Uh I'm I'm very curious to hear what those thoughts are. Yeah. So, some some people are turning it off altogether or not, you know, not looking up news in any way together and just avoiding it. you know, a Reuters Institute report last year found that four in 10 people um and this was done in different countries are sometimes or or often just avoiding the news altogether because you know they find it too overwhelming and those who consume no news said it had left them feeling too emotionally drained and anxious.

Um I think there are things we can do about this. One is uh not to have news alerts on your watch or your phone that are giving you headlines all the time. Unless you know you're a journalist and you've got to if you've got to for your job, then you've got to for your job. But but the rest of us, we don't need to know at that exact moment that the bad thing has happened. It's okay if we find that out a few hours later. If it's really close by, you know, if there are, you know, riots in your city and you need to know that, your chances are you're somebody else is going to tell and you need to actually avoid it.

someone else is going to tell you that. You're going to find out that we don't have to know the news immediately. And I think we've always become very accustomed to that. And the problem is that the bad news then pops up in the middle of when you're doing something good. Um, and this also happens, of course, with bad news from friends. Now, you know, a friend might message you and tell you that something terrible has happened, somebody's died, maybe. Um, or they'll ring you and tell you that, and it does interrupt what you're doing, but at least you can comfort them.

At least there's something you can do about it that is positive for them. But, um, with the news, there isn't. you know, there's usually nothing you can do and that makes you feel even more helpless. But also, we know it can be really harmful and extraordinary research from um Roxan uh Cohen Silva at the University of California, Irvine. She did research on the Boston Marathon bombings in um 2013. And she found that uh people who were uh consuming six or more hours a day of of either TV or online coverage were nine times more likely to have levels of acute stress than those who are watching less than 1.5 hours a day.

And even this was higher and this is the really staggering thing. It was higher than for the people who were present because for the people who are present there's a beginning, a middle, and an end to the story. It's a it's terrible and it's terrible for them that they were there and traumatizing but they there there is an end where they go home and they survive. Um when you watch it on a loop there is no um no end point. There's just this cycle of distress and that was back in 2013 and of course now it's even more available.

So in terms of what you should do I think it's you know acknowledging the feelings trying to work out does the news affect you differently at different times of day you know observing yourself for a few days and what happens. Do you find it easier to cope with if you if it's in the evening um than first thing in the morning listening to perhaps a you know a drivetime radio show or watching you know TV news in the morning? Is that setting you up well for the day or or badly for the day?

You know how are you feeling about that? Some people will differ in this. Um so monitor how and how the news items affect you. Do they make you feel panicked? Um, I noted that Roxan Cohen Silva now says she only ever listens to audio news, you know, or or radio news and doesn't watch the videos because they stay more in her mind. Um, but also we need to embrace the uncertainty and try to, you know, accept the nuance of what's going on in the news as well that it is complicated.

Everyone's not all good or, you know, all bad. But I think as well as switching off the alerts, it's really good to choose, you know, one bulletin to listen to or watch or or one website that uh you believe is reliable. Um and to to pick your fixed times to do that that maybe uh when you get home from work, maybe on your way home from work, you will then catch up with what's happening in the news and then reading something more perhaps, you know, a long read somewhere, something that's more nuanced and in-depth about it that doesn't just leave you with the panicked headlines.

I mean, people sometimes blame, you know, makers of the news for it, producers of the news, and will say, you know, oh, we need we need happy stories. And every so often there are attempts to do happy news bulletins and happy podcasts and so on. They never do quite as well as the actual news because the nature of news is, you know, it's not news that no one was murdered in London last night. You can't keep saying that every day, but the day, if you know, if 100 people are, then that has to be on the news.

The news is by definition going to be mostly negative because it is about what's new and what we need to know about and what what's urgent. Um uh there have been lots of attempts to do things like which are still going on to do you know sometimes it's called solution focused journalism or constructive journalism particularly with things like climate change that can make people feel particularly helpless where there are stories deliberately covered about uh climate change but also the difference that something has made um and how say uh you know air pollution has come down in a certain place or emissions have come down um in certain places showing that that action can make a difference because I don't think we should turn against turn away from the news altogether because we do need to know we need to know what's happening as citizens to be able to make decisions about what how to vote but also how to act what we what we need to uh where where we might need to act and put pressure on on politicians say or policy makers.

makers. makers. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean I I think worth noting that both of us come from the belly of the beast having worked as journalists. It's about it's more art than science in my in my view. It's understanding your own nervous system and you know how much can you take and when um and it's about you know walking the line uh between being an engaged citizen and a crazy person. I will add on top of your excellent recommendations three others. One is uh from uh a meditation teacher named Sabet Salassie who's a great friend of mine and a name that many of my listeners will know.

She has a policy of no news before noon. Um, and you know, I I it's not my policy, but I I think it might it works for her. I think it might work for a lot of people. So, I'm just putting it out there. Another um uh another strategy that I pursue personally, which is just in terms of tech hygiene, I put my phone away, you know, either before or right after dinner and I unless I have to, I just don't come back to it until the next morning.

And then finally, this is a much bigger picture thing, and we're going to get to bigger picture strategies for overwhelm um uh that come out of your book in a second, so I'm just kind of um uh leaping forward in in a sense. But um uh another great meditation teacher and great friend of mine, Joseph Goldstein, talks about when viewing current events to occasionally try to view it from the perspective of the planet Venus. Um- because [clears throat] you know uh as horrible as many of the things that are happening in the news are and and no neither I nor Joseph nor you are trying to um talk people you know to gaslight people and tell people that everything's fine but as as difficult as many of the news stories that we're following are from the perspective of Venus it's a little different and you know I think to put it to just to pull back and have a perspective is really really helpful.

So any thoughts on what I just said? Yeah, and I think that latter one in particular fits in with all the research that's been done on the overview effect where uh astronauts who go to the space station and I' I've interviewed some of them will um come back and say that they're allowed to take, you know, a little they have a little package of space for their own personal stuff and usually take a couple of paperbacks and they'll always say they never read the books at all because they spend any of their spare time, which isn't much because they have to work really hard, but they spend their spare time looking out the window back at Earth because it's absolutely staggering to see it from a distance like And that also this really change puts things into perspective and often makes them feel very protective of the planet.

They often uh become uh you know sort of environmental campaigners sometimes afterwards but that it allows them to step back um and feel and take some perspective and and you know this is something I talk about later in the book about thinking you know it's not about you. It's not it's not all about us, you know, as individuals and that's and this is why we can't get to space but by you know just going out and being in nature or taking an awe walk where you look for things that strike awe in you in order to get some perspective and think you know this this huge great tall beautiful I don't know redwood that you're looking at you know a tree that you're looking at is amazing and it doesn't care that and all the beetles around it you know they don't they don't care that um your work project's all going wrong and you're really stressed and uh not not happy with you know what's happening at work.

Um that you know life is going on and I think that the reason that helps us get perspective is that it reminds us as well that time moves on. If you if you're out in the woods you see bits of decay as well. You know time moves on and things change. Now in one way time moves on towards an ending we don't like but uh you're not you're not necessarily stuck in way where you are now. And one thing I think is really uh amazing and really does work is to to look when you're to observe when you're feeling really stressed about something maybe something that keeps is keeping you awake at night to see how quickly that is resolved.

Now sometimes it's not resolved quickly. you know, you may be worrying about a really serious illness or something that you've got to cope with months, maybe years of uncertainty with, but sometimes those things I mean, I noticed this the other the other week. I had a and it's something I was really really worried about linked with work and I was sort of uh couldn't sleep and was awake half the night worrying and I thought I'm going to watch and see this as when this is resolved.

I sent an email next morning and it was resolved by 10:30 in the morning um by me asking somebody something and them explaining something I hadn't realized. So in fact, you know, it was such a waste of me not being able to sleep because actually it was it was resolved really quickly. But often, you know, often it's a few days, but it's well worth doing that exercise of trying to see how long things really take. And that helps us put things into perspective as well. I always think about the fact that in and I'm going back to Buddhism again but in in Buddhism the word for equinimity is upeka which is the is from the poly language which is the langu ancient Indian subcontinental language in which the teachings of the Buddha were written down and it literally means looking over.

So it is it's right back to your point about the overview effect you know looking at looking at looking at um you know the the issues of the day in your life or in in in the culture from the vantage point of like a cliff or something like that and it it it naturally calms us down. Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is one of the reasons why you know evidence does show that as people go into get into middle age they they can often cope with things a bit better.

And it's because partly because they've got the perspective of having seen it happen before like you know it can seem like you know all the news is really terrible now. It also seemed like all the news was really terrible about in about I don't know 1999. You know there's different times where that happens and things some things resolve some things get better some things get worse but it's you know it's always moving and it's always moving on. Yeah. I'd rather be alive now than in the late 30s.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah definitely. I think another thing about being in middle age uh or or even you know in my case approaching technically senior citizenship um is is that death which you referred to as something we don't like thinking about but it does put things in perspective you know um how much time do I want to be worrying about Trump uh given that you know I have how many summers left I don't know. don't know. don't know. Yeah I think that's very true. I yeah and that that time definitely does does put things into perspective and allow us to also then think about what are the things we really do want to um give time to.

And I think one of the things that can happen with overwhelm is that um uh there's often an idea that because we think we'll have more spare time in the future that we might postpone the things we really want to do until we're less overwhelmed with everything else. um because we kind of think next year it'll all be simple and I'm going to I don't know join a choir or or do something you've really wanted to do and then we don't quite do that because it's busy as well.

And I think gradually as you as you get older it's easier to see that if if you don't do these things then you're not going to get to not going to you're not going to get to do them. Um and that we can't always wait for all the overwhelm to be over. Well, so that that makes me think and you'll tell me if this is an an appropriate segue here, but that kind of what you just said makes me think about your chapter on regret. I think regret is an interesting one to look at because fear of regret can sometimes stop us doing the things we want to do.

And and often people will say, "Oh, it's the things we regret the things we don't do rather than the things we did do." But actually, when you when you look at research, it's not quite like that. It is with and it all depends on the time frame. So for for recent events, we often regret actions. In fact, we regret that um oh, I shouldn't have taken the train today. I should have got on the bus cuz the train broke down. I wish I hadn't done that.

I wish I'd made a different decision. Whereas studies looking where they get people to look back at their lives, then they are more likely to regret the things they didn't do. But what's really interesting is that um and people will sometimes say that that cliche of you know, no one's on that no one on their deathbeds wish they'd spent more time at the office. It's not quite true. In fact, the there are some people who spent a lot of time say perhaps um devoted to work who will say they wish they spent more time with their friends and family and then there are people who did spend a lot of time with friends and family often look back and then regret and say oh I you know I wish I'd done more career-wise and I think there we have to it's a it kind of comes back to acceptance again that we we can't do all of it and that sometimes it can be a relief that you know that ship has sailed you know that that we can't do every bit of it not every option is open to us forever.

Um and that um the trouble with the things we didn't do is that we idealize them. So we think oh if I'd um I don't know if I had you know taken that particular job I thought about applied about applied for a particular job it would have I'd have got it it would have all been brilliant. It would have been amazing and I'd have completely loved working there and it would have been great. And we think of the ideal version of what might have happened but of course we never see the counterfactual.

don't know that it might not have may not have been like that at all. And also, I think we forget that we were a bit of a different person in the past. So, you may regret not having done something cuz you didn't have the confidence to. Um, but you weren't the same person that you are now. So, again, this is a kind of, you know, don't beat up your past self. Your past self made the decisions they did for the reasons they did because that's what they felt they were um able to do.

But it can affect our decision-m in the future because we know we we hate loss. But um regret is is useful too because we learn we learn from it, you know. Um uh there's an experiment I like with children where they um they get to pick uh from a box. Um and one box has got Mickey Mouse on it, one box has got Spongebob Squarepants on it, and there are tokens inside the boxes. One's got one token, um and one's got 10. And they choose their token and they get stickers for it.

So they choose their they fix it so that whichever they choose, they get one token. And um uh the kids think this is great and then they um and they're really little. They're like five, six, and they think this is good. And then they show them that the other box had 10 in it. And uh at that age, some of the children feel regret and some don't. And they get them to come back next day and they can pick from the boxes again. And the children who say they felt regretful then choose the other box.

They learn from their decision. The children who didn't experience regret yet cuz they hadn't developed that yet um don't choose the other box. they choose the same box again and make the same mistake again. So, we do need to feel regret in order to learn from it, but we don't want it to take over. Um, and I thought one of the most interesting findings on regret um when I was looking into all the research on this is that people didn't regret time that they spent on hobbies even if they'd given those up since, which I thought was was really interesting.

Um and that uh you know in a way we need to stop idealizing the alternative lives and again not beat ourselves up for it and holding on to those regrets can can lead to to rumination and and also of course if you've made a choice don't look for the counterfactual. So if you've chosen to go to one place uh on holiday don't look up the weather um in the other place if it's raining in your place. If you did lottery, if you did the lottery for ages, played the lottery, and always chose the same numbers, don't carry on looking at those numbers if you've stopped playing the lottery because you don't want to know.

It's better not to know. know. know. Another practical piece of advice uh in your book uh for for this again pervasive sense of overwhelm is is that limited choices can be liberating. What does that mean? And how do we you know operationalize that for ourselves? Yeah, I think sometimes the number of choices we have to make can, you know, add to our uh sense of overwhelm. Um, and our choices are increasing with many things. Um, and now when you want to make a choice, you know, say you're just buying something online like, you know, a bath plug or something simple.

I find myself, I'm sure lots of other people do, looking through loads of reviews to try and decide which one should I get because there's so many choices. Um, and actually that's kind of a waste of time. You know, a plug is a plug. it'll probably be fine. Um, and do I It's tiring to have those choices and sometimes having too many choices gives us more opportunity for regret. And also people can fear that their their choices are personally revealing about them. Now, I'm not absolutely not saying that having no choice is no choice um is a good thing.

But there have been studies and they've been argued about a lot about where people actually will um buy more thing, buy more things if they have fewer choices than if they have more and that they can be just overwhelming. There was a study with um a car dealership in Germany um where people if they were buying a new car, they had 67 decisions that they needed to make about, you know, what color every bit inside it would be, what kind of windows they'd have, and that actually this was completely overwhelming.

For the interior color, they have 56 options. And so people would soon start saying, well, what's the default? So they'd start picking and then they just pick defaults because they didn't want to. So choice can be tiring and give us more opportunity for regret. So I think it all depends on [snorts] uh you know out outsource your decisions if they're outside your expertise. Um and but devote the time to the choices that bring you the most meaning. Those are the ones where it's worth spending time on it.

And you know, um, Obama when he was president famously had a work uniform he decided for himself because he had enough decisions to make. So he wore the same blue or gray suit every day and that was kind of his uniform and that was one less one less thing to decide. Um, and and it can kind of free your mind. You know, the economist Fred Hirs talked about the tyranny of small decisions and that maybe we don't need to be making so many small decisions. Maybe some things can be automatic.

Maybe it's okay to just have the same sandwich if you want to for lunch. I have the same thing for lunch every day. Um I don't know if it's for me it's not really strategic. It's kind of laziness, but um yeah, but it's still one less decision to make, isn't it? And if you know you like it, then you know you like it. Okay. So as established um your book uh which is again called overwhelmed, ways to take the pressure off has three parts. The first part is acceptance.

The second part is next steps. Uh and the third part which we've already started talking about is the bigger picture. Uh we we talked about how um you know you you start this section of the book with a chapter that that's called it's not all about you and that's a good thing and it talks about the importance of awe. Um in this section you also talk about how to worry less which as a lifelong worrier I am uh very intrigued by. Can you uh uh uh talk a little bit about this this chapter?

Yeah, I mean so many of us spend you know quite a lot of our time worrying and there are so many different strategies that you can use in order to um worry less and strategies which which you know have been um uh evidenced and um are shown to be useful and one is to try to spot the patterns of worry um are there particular things that always set you off worrying. Um a a really successful strategy was developed by a Dutch clinical psychologist um which was about uh called ad kirkoff and it's about setting aside a time to worry and which may sound sort of sound ridiculous but it's to choose to set aside 10 minutes a day where you sit at a table with perhaps a piece of paper and a pen and you write down your list of worries you think about those worries and you must spend your 10 minutes worrying about those worries and the idea is that if other times of day when those worries just come into your mind because they can do that they just you know, just sort of descend on you is to you try to banish those worries and you say, "No, I'm not worrying about that now because I've got my worry time for that." Now, you had to do the worry time for this to work.

But he's found that's very effective and even effective with people who are ruminating in a in a very very um serious and um uh you know worrying harm harmful way. Other things you can do are to ask how did you cope with this last time that probably you have been through something with some things you know a bit like this. There's that one I was talking about earlier, observing how long things take to resolve. Um, but also checking your worries are accurate. You know, could you actually imagine you're in a court of law, could you convince a judge that uh this thing you're worrying about that you think will happen is really likely to happen?

What is your evidence? What's your really good evidence that this is likely to happen? Um, and you can uh kind of mentally time travel. You can think to yourself, well, I'm going to imagine myself in 3 years time looking back. Will I be worrying about this at that moment or not? Which which in a way, you know, reminds me of the idea of, you know, looking down from uh looking at Earth from Venus to to try to just get another perspective um on it. And and one thing we can try to do is to observe worries coming and going.

And obviously this is something you know people learn with uh learn mindfulness is to observe worries coming and going a bit like kind of trains coming in and out of a station that you see your worry coming and you see it going away. There are specific things you can do like um talking about your worries in the third person. This is called psychological distancing. Um and there was an interesting study in 2014 when there was the first case of Ebola in the in the US. Um and and lots of people were very worried about whether they would catch Ebola.

And they did a study with a thousand people and they got people some people to um talk about their worries in the third person to say their name but to say say uh Claudia is worried about whether she might get Ebola or whether her family might get Ebola. And other people did it in the first person. They said I'm worried about about this. Um and they found that if people did it in the third person, they could actually generate more reasons based on fact about why they personally didn't need to worry too much.

So it actually enable people to kind of look more rationally at the um at the situation. So there are all sorts of strategies people can do and also um all sorts of breathing exercises uh which people can do um to help them to worry less and and the other one is a kind of big one which is trying to find ways to accept the uncertainty and to live with uncertainty and that nothing is certain and and we have to try to find ways ways of living with that and and settling on the fact that we can live with this uncertainty.

I'll give you two more. I love your list. Um list. Um list. Um uh one comes from yet again from my meditation teacher and great friend Joseph Goldstein. Uh a little phrase he uses himself when he's worrying about something and he recommends other people is it's not fill in the blank. So right now whatever you're worrying about you might say it's not Ukraine. And that is you know it's just a great way to just to put it in perspective. Another thing that I've found personally because there's just a continuous thread in my life of worrying about um and really not in in irrational ways about um you know living under a bridge.

Um, I've told this story many times that I have a great-grandfather who took his own life uh or as the kids say today, unal alived himself um in the family kitchen because he was a crook and he got busted and lost all the family's money. And I just that hustler's blood runs through my vein. So like I just it's just a consistent thing for me. And one thing I found really helpful is articulating to myself and I even have a tattoo of this of my principal value which is to be kind of an omnidirectional vector of benefit.

You know I don't always get there. I'm a a schmuck in many many ways. Um but my north star is to be of benefit as the Buddhists say to all beings everywhere. And when I'm in that mindset, the altruistic mindset, uh, my fears of, you know, becoming irrelevant and having this podcast crash and all of my future books fail really just they they're I can see them in a very different light. Does that does that land for you? Oh, totally. I mean, my last book was about kindness and all the evidence that there is that of why, you know, being kind and and spotting kindness around you um as well as receiving kindness is so beneficial.

And so that you know that's so that makes so much sense and that um a lot of people will find you know at moments where they are really suffering and life is is really hard and for that for that book you know I was I interviewed an asylum seeker who'd escaped from you know two different countries where she'd then been persecuted and had appalling things happen to her and uh was in London and was homeless and had a you know then had a terrible time here.

Um and then she uh you know got settled and the first thing she did it wasn't allowed to work at first as I'm sick can't work here but she what the one of the first things she did was to start to volunteer helping others and even though she'd had such a terrible time she then uh her focus was outward and she said that was the thing that totally turned things around for her mentally. You know she was feeling very depressed and that once she was doing stuff volunteering for others it it really really changed that.

Um as you say the same sort of values. Yeah. Yeah. I believe there are studies and I don't have them at hand but that show that you know uh recovering alcoholics who become sponsors who are helping other alcoholics. Same thing with uh [clears throat] folks who have HIV who are volunteering like they there are there are real physiological benefits of you know relapse goes down you live longer. So yes we are as every TED talk reminds us social species. though um it's good to harness that to your own benefit.

benefit. benefit. In this uh final chapter uh in this final section of the book which is about tapping into the bigger picture to help us manage these feelings of overwhelm. You also talk about the importance of taking breaks uh which I've gotten slightly better at in my own life, but it's always good to have a reminder. Can you uh tell us what what the recommendations are there? Yeah, I mean it's it's hugely important to take um breaks and to rest and to not think of that as being something that's lazy.

There is so much evidence that uh taking breaks is uh good for us psychologically and good for our [clears throat] mental health. Um and actually that that is what led me to to write this book. I wrote a book about rest, uh, the art of rest that we we talked about before. And so many people came up to me at book festivals and other events, um, and said to me that that one insight, that one psychological insight of knowing that breaks were good for you mentally had made a real difference to them.

And that was what got me thinking, well, what else what else is there really good evidence for that would be good if people knew? And that's why this book is about kind of 16 things you need to know that could make a difference. Um and yeah and one of those is that it is good to take a break and um there is so much so much evidence for this and it can even work in unexpected um circumstances and so you know Edund Hillary and Tenzing Nor took they took a 10-minute break every hour as they climbed Everest in in 1953 and and knew back then that they needed this 10-minute break every hour.

And even I I'm interested in these studies that were done in Germany where surgeons in the middle of operations took a 5-minute break every 25 minutes. And these were operations on children. And it was a three-hour operation. And even though they had a 5-minute break every 25 minutes, the 3-hour operation took no longer um and they had fewer difficulties. And they got um they collected saliva samples from behind their masks while they were um operating. And the surgeons also had um lower cortisol levels. So they were they were feeling less stressed and doing the operation better and having breaks.

Now obviously the anthetist stayed um not having a break um and making sure the um the children were safe. But it shows that if you know if surgeons can have breaks in the middle of an operation then uh surely the rest of us can can try to have a break again without feeling guilty. And uh in the research that that I did on this that we had 18,000 people take part in a proportion said that they felt guilty whenever they rested. And I think we've really got to learn not to feel guilty um when we take a a break.

Just to say the listener as Claudia uh mentioned her first appearance on the show was to discuss her book on rest and I will put a link in the show notes if you want to go back and listen to that. I'll also put a link to buy that book if you want to go buy it. Um it. Um it. Um uh okay also in this section of the book on the bigger picture you have a chapter called in praise of nostalgia. I'd love to hear more about the case for nostalgia.

nostalgia. nostalgia. Yeah. You see, I think nostalgia is something that we we kind of um neglect a bit, but there is evidence that um deliberately thinking about some nostalgic memories and immersing yourself in those and concentrating on them can boost mood um and increased self-esteem and optimism. It can make you feel proud um of things you've done. It can put you in touch with your earlier self, which reminds us that we have a core that persists um which can can add meaning um to life. But it's interesting because the history of nostalgia is not a positive one.

It used to be seen as a psychiatric disease in the 18th and 19th centuries. And in the uh American Civil War, one of the leading causes of non-combat deaths um is listed as um nostalgia. And you can see nostalgia on people's death certificates. And they were very worried about people feeling um homesick. But there we now know that there are real uh benefits to um deliberately trying to induce a bit of nostalgia. There are um experiments where it makes couples feel more um romantic and more um positive about their relationships if they get them to to think back on some um times when they uh felt romantic together or they get them in some experiments to um listen to music that they associate with their past together and this made people feel um closer and more optimistic.

Um or um there's even a study where it helped people um help with pain relief. So they did one of those uh really mean studies um where they um held a thermal device on people's arms sort of 15 times on low heat um and then 15 times on high heat which really hurt the high heat um didn't burn them but it really hurt. And beforehand they either had to come up with everyday or particularly nostalgic memories. And those who came up with nostalgic memories could um withstand more um of the heat.

And we know that when we feel when people feel upset or lonely or cold, people will naturally turn to um nostalgia. Um and people who are more prone to nostalgia. There's a there's a scale called the Southampton nostalgia scale to measure this. Um on average show more empathy and are and are kinder to um to other people. So um I so I think there are real benefits of nostalgia and in a way it scaffolds our sense of ourselves over time and it's it's a kind of psychological resource we can turn to because we we have these nostalgic memories if we want to.

Now, there is one really important thing, particularly if you're prone to depression, then if you're going to think of nostalgic memories from the past, it's best if they're memories which are still kind of congruent with yourself now. Um, so that it doesn't feel like, oh, well, that was another world when everything was better and now it's all terrible, which might make you feel worse. So, it's best to perhaps narrow the time frame to one to five years ago if you feel you're a very different person with a very different life than you had in the past so that it's something relatively more recent um uh in case it makes you feel worse.

But you can also there have been studies, you know, you can have a bank of lovely memories on your phone. You could make a list or it could be um you know, a little folder of photos of things that make you feel particularly nostalgic that you can look at every so often to make you feel a bit better. So that it's interesting because I had a lunch the other day with an old friend, a war buddy, but I'm using that term technically because we were uh combat correspondents together um back in the early as and post 911 and we were every time we see each other we go back and I don't think about that time much but when I see somebody who I went through it with I obviously all comes flooding back and it was I find it really enjoyable enjoyable enjoyable not only to see my old friend but to talk about these these things.

However, it's interesting what you said about this congruency issue because I was a lot better looking then um and single and you know I'm happy married but you know like my life was very different and yet I don't I don't find that it makes me sad to think back at that time. Is that just because I'm not depressed? depressed? depressed? Yeah. So I think if people are are happy now then they can look back and see their you know think about their earlier life and consider that and it it can be kind of bittersweet.

It's often described as a bittersweet emotion cuz it's slightly sort of tinged with sadness about oh those are the days but you know they're not the days anymore. It's only if people are specifically feeling depressed and if they feel their life is much worse now then then it can feel um difficult looking back at it. But for most people, yeah, it's it's bittersweet. But it can also um improve um even there's even studies looking at nostalgia in the workplace about previous things you did with your colleagues.

And I think um sometimes you know I was at a leaving do I was at a leaving do last week actually of an engineer who a studio engineer who has left after 45 years um and uh and someone we all was very funny and very very good at his job and someone we all adore. It was a massive leading do and there were all sorts of memories. people were sharing in the speeches and so on and and I think at the end of it the next day sort of you know everyone I bumped into the next day was saying oh wasn't that great and it sort of reminds you about why we like working here and so sometimes you know work can be stressful and then something like that was was a kind of evening of nostalgia in a way and reminded us all why yeah it's it's really great to meet all these people and work with people at a place like this like this like this your final chapter the 16th and we have not covered all the recommendations in the book you should go buy the book but the 16th recommendation um in your book on overwhelm is called getting into the flow.

Please tell us more about that. Yeah. And so this is about the concept of flow which people might well have have heard of um and which was developed by Mahari Chicken Mahari who um in the 80s and he interviewed you know thousands of people teenagers in Tokyo and farmers in the Italian Alps and all sorts of people and asked them how often they felt that they experience this sense of flow and this is when you're completely concentrating with a really clear idea of what you want to achieve a sense of control over that.

people often describe feeling out of time. It's not that time goes fast or slowly, but they feel kind of out of time. Um, and he found then that, you know, 20% of people said they experienced it every day. 15% said never, and most people were in between. It's more likely um it found it was felt more in people who were high scored high on conscientiousness, less likely in people who felt um anxious. Um and that when they paged people um randomly through the day, then the things that um often made people people were experiencing flow sometimes if they were studying or working um often it's a creative thing but that people are quite good at it might be something like um painting or uh for me it would be gardening.

I I really don't think about other things while I'm gardening cuz I just think about that and I love it. And there are certain factors that make it work really well, which is if if there's a balance between the skills that you've got and the challenges. So, it needs to be not too easy and not too hard. So really really absorbing if there are really clear goals you know what you're trying to achieve and if you get immediate feedback um and and it's in a nice situation and it can be a small thing you know there are micro flows um and so I would say you know I might get that from say playing Wordle it's not too hard and it's not too easy and it varies and it keeps me entertained and there's there's clear goals there's immediate feedback I know I know what my score was um and and that's you know something I do every day and that's a nice absorbed moment where I don't think about anything else.

Um, and it helps if it's distracting and it has a purpose um in itself. And we can see that in studies the reward system of the brain is is activated if people are say um given maths to do at just the right level for them. And it's a really clever study where they can adjust it to how good people are at maths where you need to feel absorbed but not stressed about it. Um and um they've done it experiments with pists as well. They wired them up and measured all sorts of things and the higher their flow, the lower their blood pressure and their uh heart rate and the the deeper their breathing was and the more they smiled and percussionists they found of the musicians experienced the most flow which is interesting.

So maybe become a drummer. Um but um there'll be different things for different people and I think it's something if you can find that thing I think people are really lucky if they can find the thing that gives them flow because if life the rest of life is overwhelming then for a while there's this thing you can you can concentrate on you can do and I wonder if this comes up to comes back to why people don't regret the hobbies that they've done um is that uh they get this sense of just being completely absorbed in in that moment.

I am a drummer and uh it is one of the rare times when I get into flow. It never happens while I'm writing. I hate writing, but I do it for a living. living. living. Writing is really hard. That's why. Although maybe drumming's hard. I can't do it. So, it's hard to me. Well, I learned when I started when I was 10, so it is very hard. You have to have be able to do different things with each limb, which And it's interesting because I'm a horrible dancer.

I I I um am totally uncoordinated when it comes to dancing or um but I can play the drums as I learned really really early. Um and so did my son. I got him started at six. So that is a great source of flow for the two of us. I I did have a breakthrough cuz I've long had this you know many many guests have come on the show and talked about flow and I've always felt like it's not really that accessible for me. Maybe because I'm anxious or self-conscious.

Um, and I did have a breakthrough recently where I realized that that I do experience flow in conversation. Um, I'm a massive extrovert and when I'm having conversations either on this podcast or I think more more most especially especially especially socially or group creative collaborations, I really lose track of time and I'm not thinking about anything else. else. else. Yeah. Yeah. I know just I don't just what you mean. Yeah. If you're really listening to somebody and you're really engaged in that conversation, then nothing else goes on.

This has been, as it was the last time you were on the show, a complete pleasure and super helpful. Um, anything you were hoping to get to that we have not gotten to? I think I think we've covered, you know, a lot of it. You know, there's lots more practical things that people can do, but I think it's accepting that uh we may be living in an age of overwhelm, but it is reversible. you know there are things that it is in our control to do.

There's lots of external things we can't control. So we need to take control of the things we can um in order to to take the pressure off a bit and in order to to feel less overwhelmed. And I think it's a question of it's not like all of these different things will work for every single different person. Um and so it is a question of developing your own anti-overwhelm prescription from all these different suggestions and to experiment a bit and see well which ones which ones really work for me and which ones don't and all the 16 um chapters all the 16 things you need to know are all based on evidence and so they will all work for some people and it's a question of working out what works for you.

you. you. Excellent. Great way to wrap up. Um final question for you. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your new book and also your other books and your podcast? Just please just plug everything if you don't mind. The book is called Overwhelmed: How to Take the Pressure Off. Um I've also written a book on kindness called the keys to kindness. Um the art of rest um that we mentioned all about why it's okay to take a breath. All about why it's okay to take a break and why we need to do that.

Um, I wrote a book called Time Warped, which is all about our time perception and why uh time sometimes seems to go slowly, s time sometimes seems to go fast. And I wrote one called Mind Over Money, all about what psychological research can tell us about uh money, savings, spending, all the decisions we make about money to help us make better decisions about it. And then my very first book of all a long time ago was called Emotional Roller Coaster, which was about the the science of emotions and why we feel the way we do.

Um I have two different um BBC podcasts. Um one is called All in the Mind and that is about psychology and neuroscience and mental health and the the very latest uh research and evidence on that. And the other one is called Health Check which is about which is on every week and is about um global health and well-being um all around the world and the latest on that. Claudia Haven, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It was fun.