The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The conversation explores the causes and elements of stress, using a hypothetical scenario of a stressed eighth-grade teacher. Dr. Ed Locke, an expert on stress and coping, identifies five key elements: threatened values, perceived need to act, uncertainty, conflict, and emotional response. He suggests practical advice such as reconsidering job satisfaction, managing time better, and possibly reducing parental visitation. Additionally, he highlights the concept of secondary anxiety or meta-anxiety, where one becomes anxious about their anxiety. The discussion also promotes a course on stress and coping by Dr. Locke and a book on romance co-authored by Dr. Ellen Kenner.

Action Items: [ ] Reconsider the teaching job, as the speaker seems to hate it. [ ] Regulate time better, especially by limiting time spent with parents. [ ] Consider putting the den project on hold and getting a house sitter to stay with the kids.

Outline:

Understanding Stress and Its Causes
Speaker 2 introduces the topic of stress, mentioning various sources of stress such as children, boss, health concerns, and social interactions.
Speaker 2 welcomes Dr. Ed Locke, an expert on stress and coping, to discuss the causes and elements of stress.
Dr. Locke is introduced as a Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Business Management at the University of Maryland, a Harvard alumnus, and a former therapist.
Dr. Locke expresses his pleasure in being on the show and readiness to discuss stress.

Exploring a Stressful Scenario
Speaker 2 presents a detailed scenario of a full-time eighth-grade teacher who is stressed due to various factors, including work, family, health, and personal life.
The teacher feels overwhelmed by the demands of his job, lack of time for his wife, and health issues like high blood pressure.
He also mentions concerns about his teenage sons, fear of leaving them alone, and discovering carpenter ants in his home, leading to a panic attack.
Speaker 2 asks Dr. Locke to help understand the key elements of stress in this scenario.

Identifying Elements of Stress
Dr. Locke identifies the first element of stress as an important value being threatened, mentioning the teacher's love for his work, marital life, health, and personal time.
The second element is the perceived need to take action, such as dealing with difficult students, spending time with his wife, and improving his health.
Dr. Locke is interrupted for a brief ad break but resumes to discuss the third element of stress: uncertainty about what actions to take or how to carry them out.
The fourth element is conflict, particularly over time and money, with the teacher facing conflicts related to his job, family, and personal projects.

Emotional and Physiological Responses to Stress
Dr. Locke explains the fifth element of stress: emotional responses, such as panic attacks, anxiety, anger, and insomnia.
He emphasizes that these emotional responses often have physiological accompaniments, adding to the overall stress.
Dr. Locke notes that the scenario includes all five elements of a classic stress reaction.
Speaker 2 and Dr. Locke discuss the concept of secondary anxiety or meta-anxiety, where one becomes anxious about their anxiety, further increasing stress.

Practical Advice for Managing Stress
Speaker 2 asks Dr. Locke for one piece of advice to help the stressed teacher.
Dr. Locke suggests reconsidering whether the teacher wants to keep the same job, as hating one's job can make life miserable.
He recommends the teacher be more determined to regulate his own time, possibly reducing time spent with his parents and abandoning the den project temporarily.
Dr. Locke advises the teacher to hire a house sitter to allow for more time with his wife and to manage his stress better.

Promotion of Stress Management Course
Speaker 2 recommends Dr. Locke's course on stress and coping, available at the Iron Bookstore.
Speaker 2 thanks Dr. Locke for his insights and mentions their collaborative book on romance.
The book covers topics such as finding a romantic partner, making oneself lovable, running a relationship well, and parting ways if necessary.
Speaker 6 promotes the Rational Basis of Happiness podcast and encourages listeners to visit DrKenner.com for more information.

Advertisement for "The Selfish Path to Romance"
Speaker 5 introduces an advertisement for "The Selfish Path to Romance," a serious romance guidebook.
The guidebook is described as offering practical advice on what individuals want from a relationship and how to find a suitable partner.
Listeners are encouraged to download chapter one for free and purchase the book on Amazon.
The advertisement emphasizes the importance of realistic standards in relationships and avoiding unattainable expectations.

Keywords
stress causes, coping strategies, perceived need, emotional response, time conflict, money conflict, secondary anxiety, job dissatisfaction, time management, parental time, house sitter, stress elements, panic attack, relationship advice, romantic guidebook

The Selfish Path to Romance.
Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and buy the book on Amazon.com.

What are you doing?
Nothing.
Is that to be incinerator?
Yes.
What is it?
It's just some things you totally throw away.
Now, think about what's causing stress in your life. Stress comes in all shapes and all sizes, and I'll give you just a quick sampling. My kids are driving me crazy, or I hate my boss, or I'm worried that I might have a heart attack, or I can't stand being around my friends, they're so jealous of me, or I just feel awkward around them. I'm afraid to date. What are the key factors in stress, and how can you understand the causes of your own stress better?
It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Ed Locke. He's an expert on stress and coping. Dr. Locke is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Business Management at the University of Maryland. He is a Harvard alumnus with a PhD from Cornell, and he was also a therapist for 15 years. Dr. Locke, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
It's always a pleasure to have you on. Well, what I was thinking of doing is just giving you a situation and identifying what are the key elements of stress. People don't understand stress, and that's part of coping, is understanding what's causing it. So imagine that I say to you, Ed, I am so stressed out. I work as a full-time eighth-grade teacher, and the kids are driving me crazy, I'm losing my temper with them. And then I get home in the evenings and all I do is look at all their papers to grade. I mean, I'm beginning to hate these kids, and I have to work on lesson plans, and I look at my wife. I never have time for her. I don't get any sleep, and my doctor's telling me I've got high blood pressure and I need to relax, and there's just no time. On weekends, we spend too much time with my elderly parents, and I'm also building an addition on a den place to relax, haha, and it's taking me forever, and we would love to go out. My wife and I would love to spend time together, but we're just afraid to leave our two teenage boys alone because we're afraid they'll bring their friends over and be boozing, and on top of that, I discovered we had carpenter ants, and I had a panic attack. Help me understand. I just want to run away to a Caribbean vacation. What should I do?
Well, let's look at the elements. This is obviously an extremely stressful life, but let's look at some of the elements that define this as stressful. First one is that an important value is perceived as threatened here, and here we have multiple values that are threatened. We have his love for his work being threatened because the kids are awful and there's too much work. We have his marital life being threatened because there's no time to spend with his wife. We have his health and sleep patterns being threatened as a result of all this. We have all kinds of values this person has that are under assault here. The second element in a stress situation is there's a perceived need to do something, to take action, like "I have to do something about dealing with these kids. I have to grade their homework. I have to do something to have time with my wife. I have to do something to improve my health. I have to do something to get rid of my spending all my spare time with my parents." So there's a need to take some action, and that action is possible—only you might not know what it is.
That brings us to the third element of stress: uncertainty in the form of "What should I do? Or how can I do it? Or how will I be able to carry it out?" So this fellow didn't know what to do, and when there were things he wanted to do, like spending time with his wife, he didn't know how to do it because he didn't want to leave his kids alone. So we have uncertainty about the relevant action and whether one can carry it out.
The fourth element involved in stress, which you can see here, is conflict. There's a conflict element. A lot of the conflict here is over time, which is very, very common in modern life. Probably the two biggest conflicts people have are time and money. And here, there's time for his job, time for his wife, time to sleep, time to do things for his health, time with his parents, and time for his work on the den—and maybe some money stress due to finding ants, carpenter ants, which may require some expensive treatment of the house. So you can see there's all kinds of conflict involved here. And we can see also the fifth element in stress: there's an emotional response. He feels a panic attack, he feels anxious, he feels angry, he feels upset, he has insomnia, and he has high blood pressure. So there's an emotional response along with its physiological accompaniment. So we can see all the five elements in the situation: important values are threatened, important values are threatened in some way, there's a perceived need to act to protect these values, there's uncertainty about what to do or being able to do what needs to be done, there's an element or elements of conflict ("I must deal with this, but I can't; I must, but I don't know how"), and there's an emotional response, usually anxiety or fear, accompanied often by physical symptoms, which can be an added source of stress—in this case, insomnia. So this case includes all the elements of a classic stress reaction.
Plus, he's anxious about having a panic attack, right?
You can be anxious about your anxiety, which we call secondary anxiety or meta-anxiety. So you can be anxious about your anxiousness, which increases. This makes you more anxious. You can be anxious about your symptoms of anxiety, which makes you more anxious.
If you could give him one piece of advice—I know he probably could use many hours in therapy—but one piece of advice, what would you tell him?
Well, I don't know I could give him one piece because there's a lot of things here, but I'd say, number one, I'd reconsider whether he wants to keep the same job because he seems to hate it. There's nothing worse than going every day to a job that you don't like, and he seems not to like it at all. So whether this means changing to another profession or going to a school where the kids are better, I don't know, but that would be certainly a major one, because you spend a lot of time at your work—if you hate it, it makes your whole life miserable. So that's certainly one thing. Another thing I'd say is he has to be more determined to regulate his own time, and not let his parents eat it up. So one thing that's going to have to go is parent time, and he has to tell them, "I just can't see you all the time anymore. I've got too much to do," and maybe for a while, abandon the den job, hold it in abeyance, and then get a house sitter that can stay with the kids.
Yeah, and I wish we had more time to give him advice. Ed, I want to recommend your course. You have a course on stress and coping, which is available at the IronBookstore.com. And I also want to thank you so much for joining us today.
My pleasure.
It's a pleasure for me to hear Dr. Ed Locke again, to be able to talk with him, because we've written a book together. We've written a book on romance that is a wonderful book. It's the soup-to-nuts book on how to find a romantic partner, how to make yourself lovable, how to run a relationship well, how to communicate, and how to part ways if things don't work out. So we've got a lot in that book—a wonderful book. Dr. Ellen Kenner, and you're listening to the Rational Basis of Happiness. For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com, and please listen to this ad.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by Drs. Kenner and Locke:
Too many individuals settle for less than they want because they are desperate to have a relationship or a spouse, then spend years or decades regretting their decision. Take the time to discover what you long for in a partner. On the other side of this coin, do not hold unreasonable standards requiring your partner to be exactly what you want in every last detail. Decide what's most important, and then decide if you're willing to make allowances for the smaller things. Avoid spending years pining for what you cannot get. If your dream partner is brilliant, highly educated, incredibly attractive, and a high-level professional, and you are none of these things, find a more suitable match. Never wish for something you can't have—it will only make you miserable.
You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book on Amazon.com.