46: Annie Miller - How to Handle Stress In Your Relationships

Welcome to the Talk to People Podcast.

It is Chris Miller here.

If you haven't listened or watch the Talk to People Podcast before, know that this whole podcast is an endeavor that I'm on to help young adults improve their social connection.

I believe that life is better when you talk to people, and if you have great relationships, you're going to be more bouncy and more resilient to stress, which is what we're all about.

But today, we have someone who's a guest, so we just got off the four-round solo episode series.

But every now and then, I like to sit down with a guest, someone who knows a little bit about social connection, about relationships, and really social energy to help us improve what we have going on.

So we have Annie Miller in the house.

Hi, Chris.

Hey, hey, hey.

This is your first time in the new studio.

I love it.

That we're still working on.

Yeah.

These chairs belong up here.

Yeah.

I really love them, and so I want them in our living room, but they belong up here full time.

They started off in the living room.

Well, because we have the dining room, living room studio, and now we have a studio studio.

So the, well, it's still a studio.

It's getting there.

It's getting there.

It will get there.

Yes.

I have faith.

I'm done putting up a fight.

These bad boys belong in here.

They're here to stay.

We do need new pillows, though.

We got to ditch the pink pillows, don't you think?

We'll get different pillows.

But to give context, you were the very first guest in the podcast when it was audio.

And then whenever I started transitioning over to video, I had you back on.

And then whenever I transitioned to 4K video, you came on.

And then now in this new studio, you're the first guest in the new studio.

Thanks, Chris.

Of course.

Thanks for having me back.

I've been incredibly supportive of the podcast and of the podcast host.

So it also works out really well because you care about the subject matter and you've studied it, you've taught it.

You think about it and we talk a lot about it.

Well, thank you so much for having me back.

I love doing this.

No surprise.

I'm trying to get a pod under the Talk to People umbrella.

Yeah, do you want to give anybody a little sneak peek?

No, I don't know what I'm going to talk about yet.

Okay, but you have expressed interest in that.

I have.

I would like to do one with you.

Called?

Regularly.

Would it be about relationships?

Probably, yeah.

Young married couples?

Yeah, my mom gave us that idea.

Shout out to Meir.

Which is important.

It is important.

But also, I mean, I'm serious about, I love doing podcasts.

I'm so grateful that you have me on because it kind of fills that.

Yeah, that works out well.

It does.

It's a lot of fun.

You make it a lot of fun.

You said you want to start with rapid fires.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I have a few good ones.

Do you want me to go first?

Yeah.

You ask me, and then I'll flip the tables, ask you.

Describe your style in one word.

That's tough.

It's funny, the first word that comes to mind is neat, but I don't always feel that way.

So I don't think that's, it's not sophisticated, it's not classy.

I would say solid.

Solid, that's your, that's what-

It's solid, it's okay, it's not incredible.

I just produced a podcast on the Cruise Line pod with a guy named DeWyte, D-E-E-W-I-G-H-T, and I think DeWyte too, but he got into fashion in Kansas City, and I was looking at his Instagram thinking, I want to get a fashion consultation with this guy.

He set me up.

But I also say solid because I wear a lot of solid colors without logos.

So it's solid, yeah, it's reliable, and solid tees, I'm not getting into logos.

Yeah.

What about you?

Colorful.

Colorful, that's a good word.

Yeah, as you can see.

It's pretty on the money.

It's pretty on the money.

If we could show your shoes, oh yeah.

They're incredibly colorful.

I don't know if they can see them.

So yeah, we'll do that as the last rapid fire question, and then we can get into a topic that I think could be beneficial.

I don't know about this topic.

And I feel like with you, whenever I have you on as a guest, I have the unique opportunity to talk about things that I may not be able to talk about with other people.

And-

That's good.

I'm glad.

I think that is, a lot of it is especially in the relationship domain, because we are an active, exclusive relationship with one another.

Yeah, pretty exclusive.

Known as marriage.

And I think something we've been navigating lately with the year of 2023 has been a ton of transition.

And it has been a lot of excitement and a lot of stress.

So I would love to maybe walk through or talk about the process of navigating stress in relationships.

And we could talk about tips there, or we could talk about experiences or stories, revelations you had, thought patterns.

I like this.

This is a good topic.

You want me to just start with something?

So I am so glad you bring this up, Chris, because we have in 2023, there have been a lot of changes, a lot of really good ones, but even good, my dad always says this, even good changes can come with stress.

Good things can produce stress, which is really true.

And sometimes when you're in a really good season and you are stressed, I don't know if other people, I definitely do this, I'm sure other people do as well, but you think to yourself, things are going so well, why am I stressed?

You know, but we really can, it's kind of such as life, right?

And it's learning how to cope with it and as an individual, and then in a relationship as you navigate stress.

But I think those life factors, those life situations, those everyday stressors, right?

Everyday hassles, that's kind of what they call them in research, everyday stressors.

And then you've got life events, and then the bigger, more acute things that can bring on stress.

And nobody is immune to those, you know?

Yeah, because I would consider us both fairly relational and emotionally intelligent.

I think that we are probably above average.

Oh, gosh, we're hyping ourselves up.

Whenever it comes to articulating emotion, and that is maybe sort of because of our wiring, but also just because that's some of the stuff we studied.

And it comes at a cost, right?

Whenever you and I were studying relational communication or interpersonal communication, we weren't studying pest extermination, right?

So we have to...

Did you say pest?

Pest, yeah.

Well, we're dealing with that right now.

We have to...

It comes at a cost, right?

We don't know how to deal with that, but we do a little bit know.

We don't know how to work on cars, but we do a little bit know how to talk about people.

And even with that being said, it still gets pretty darn stressful.

Oh, yeah, even if you know these ideas, principles, tips, we don't always put them in a practice.

Think about healthy eating, right?

We know it's good to eat healthy, but do we always put it in practice?

No.

And sometimes that's okay, everything in moderation, but with stress and relationships and those tips, I think it's so helpful and adaptive to be able to implement them as much as you can.

So tell me, how do you...

We haven't really discussed this before.

How do you, in a stressful time, mentally process that and move forward, particularly between if it's something with the relationship?

Or like a life event that affects both of us?

Like a life event that affects both of us.

Because I feel like it's good to know that whenever I talk about stress and relationships, that doesn't mean I'm stressed about our relationship.

I'm glad you say that.

Because I think that's what I was trying to get at too with the life events or the everyday stressors, those types of things.

So it doesn't have to be stressed about the relationship.

And oftentimes it's not.

It's about something else that impacts an individual who in it, you know, when you're in a relationship, there's interdependent nature.

So I affect you, you affect me.

Right?

I think that it's my goal.

And I do think sometimes I practice this, but certainly nobody bats a thousand.

I like to process stress, or I prefer to as a mechanism to do it out loud, to talk to somebody.

So I use an example, when you were traveling a lot for work, that was very stressful.

That wasn't in 2023, but you know, I would often communicate with you, and you would communicate with me how that was a stressful experience.

And by talking about it and empathizing with each other, you kind of feel like you've got a shared, even though we were in a tough season with work, where you were not here all the time, talking about it and being almost sharing this stress, or maybe the weight of this stress, helped us like bond together.

It's bonding in a weird way.

Does that make sense?

Like you feel like you're in the thick of it together.

And you do that by processing out loud, and talking to one another and being open and being vulnerable.

So I think that's one way that I would navigate it.

And then also, likewise, as an individual, if I've got something that's stressing me out, or causing a lot of stress in my life, I will tell you about it.

Like, hey, this happened at work, or this happened in this friendship, and it's causing me some stress and anxiety.

And by talking to you about it, or talking to my mom or my sister or a friend, by talking to somebody about it, I can make sense of it, but I can also gain another perspective, which can be really, really helpful because sometimes we give more weight to the stressor than we need to.

And so having somebody else to help us make sense of it, and put it in perspective is really helpful.

The togetherness is something that stuck out to me.

All of that we could go through and talk about, but whenever you say go through it together, together, I think that is super important to talk about because if I'm stressed, if you're stressed, for instance, we just recently moved and talking to one another about, hey, it's stressful.

It's going to be stressful because no matter how you move, there's transition.

And typically whenever your status quo changes, there's resistance there because it's not comfortable since you were used to one thing.

But now we're getting comfortable to a new thing, so there's going to be stress.

And you and I discussing, hey, no matter who it is, the people next to us were stressed out when they moved in.

The people across the street were stressed out.

It may be different levels of stress and different coping mechanisms, different coping mechanisms.

And that's something that we have to figure out with one another.

And we've been learning about one another is something stress you out, that don't stress me out and vice versa.

And then when that happens, I'm laughing thinking about things that stress me out that don't stress you out.

Yeah.

When that happens, we will use different coping mechanisms, and we will try and find out how to eliminate that stress.

But talking about it is really helpful because if you can, as quickly as you can, position it to where, okay, we are going through this, but we can get through this.

Being together is, the quicker you can do that, I think the better, because it's easy for us to be individually stressed, but then not communicate that.

And that can be isolating.

Yeah.

Can I make a note on the move?

Because moving is stressful.

I think probably the top stressors are finances, relationships, things like moving, obviously, illness, sickness, loss, things like that.

I don't mean to put moving in the same categories as loss and illness, but I think it's probably, if you were to look at the most common stressors, there's a list somewhere floating around.

Moving is probably one of the most common shared stressors that a lot of people can relate to.

But I think there's also kind of coming to a place of acceptance about a situation, like, hey, this is probably going to be stressful, kind of disarms a little bit of it.

And you can take 10% off the top because you know, hey, this is stressful, objectively speaking, this stresses most people out.

And I think that place of acceptance can change your perspective, which then can change how you behave and act in the situation.

So I think you and I actually made moving a lot of fun for the most part.

I think we had a really good attitude about it.

Even the big moving day, we weren't really all that flustered.

I think another ace up our sleeves was that we had, we brought people in who made it a lot of fun to that big moving day, like Mia and Jimmy.

They helped us and Mike, they helped us and we did a lot of laughing and, Mia and I sometimes laugh so hard to the point where we feel like weak in the knees.

And it made the move fun.

And it made the move fun.

And so I think that is, I guess that's an example of how to buffer against the negative impacts of stress is making the most of the situation, right?

We knew it was going to be stressful.

We came to a place of acceptance, invited people, not invited, people graciously offered to help us move, and they made it really fun along the way.

But humor is a huge buffer against stress.

Who says John Gottman?

Does he say if you can make one another laugh?

Oh, yeah, he says that.

Yeah, John Gottman.

That's I think he specifically is talking about conflict situations, but stress and conflict aren't synonymous, but there is overlap.

I'm thinking of we were in conflict recently, and I made you laugh and you didn't want to laugh.

No, and then I couldn't stop laughing.

And then I had to gather myself and say, hey, I'm serious about this.

As you were laughing?

As I was laughing.

And I should just give in to the laughter at that point.

That way you could get back to your position, your stance.

And that's an example of sometimes we're so married to the idea of our position that we're not willing to lean into the humor, for example, when I should have just leaned into the humor, because I kept laughing every time I was trying to take my stance, or make my stance known.

And it's John and Julie.

John and Julie Gottman.

We talk about them a lot, don't we?

And relational experts who can detect at a very high rate.

I think it is high 90s.

The likelihood of a relationship's demise.

They can predict with 90, I think it's something crazy, like 96 or 97% accuracy, because they've done research for over, at this point, probably over 30 years of research.

And it seems like the presence of the four relational killers are one of the best ways to signal whether or not there's going to be...

Yeah, specifically, they're...

Yeah, the four horsemen of the apocalypse is what they call them.

Criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt.

But out of those four, those are negative tendencies that they've seen in interactions between partners.

They all are...

None of them are good, right?

They're not good behaviors to exhibit, but there's one that is the biggest predictor of a relationship's demise, and that's contemptuous behavior.

But what's cool...

I think we talked about this on a previous episode.

They've identified those four negative tendencies and conflict, and they've created antidotes to them.

Super cool.

So like love mapping, create a culture of appreciation, humor as a bid for connection.

So they've found ways to not only identify these patterns, but how to give couples tools, equip them with tools to be able to, when they exhibit those behaviors, or to minimize them, I should say.

And what's great is that those aren't not...

They don't have to be specific to married relationships, I don't think.

I think you can apply that in lots of situations.

You know, humor, connection.

Do you think it applies to platonic relationships?

The antidotes?

Or what do you mean?

Do you think it would be friendship killers?

Do I think it would be friendship killers?

Yeah, I think criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt are just not good behaviors or styles of communication.

They're not pro-social behaviors.

They're pro-social behaviors.

So I think in any context, heck, maybe it's even...

I had a phone conversation last week with a man over the phone.

I was trying to figure something out, and he was very contemptuous and condescending over the phone.

I don't even know him.

He doesn't know me.

How would you describe contemptuous?

Condescending, thinking that you're better than the person that you're talking to, or in the married example, better than the person you're married to, and you communicate in that way.

So talking down to them, making voices like, Oh, you always do this, and yeah, mocking them is a big one.

So anything that you say or the way that you say it that signals that you think you're better than the other person.

I find stress oftentimes manifests itself.

And one of the ways it does that is by debilitating the ability to navigate conflict.

Because I feel like when we're stressed, we may be more irritable, so we'll be less patient, and we'll be quick to assume.

Kind of short.

We'll be short, and then we may check out sooner.

Yeah, that's true.

And that's why I think there's that overlap between stress and conflict.

They don't always go hand in hand, but I think they can.

And that's where it's hard, even for you and me and lots of other people, where you know these things, you have awareness of these tips and principles that are grounded in research that are known to be really helpful.

But when you're in moments of stress, it's almost hard to pull out your toolbox because you're not thinking the way that you would think if you weren't in a stressful situation.

You know, stress can cloud.

Even if you're stressed, like we said, about something happening at work or something happening in your group or whatever it is, whatever the context is, that can carry over.

So like the spillover effect, right?

That can spill over into other contexts and relationships.

And so that can cloud the way that you think when you're in conflict with somebody, even if you navigate conflict historically, if you navigate it really well.

So whenever you see me stressed, how do you approach that?

Well, I know that you really love physical touch, so I'll give you a hug, and I'll pat your back to make sure you know I'm physically there and that you're secure.

And the only...

As I've gotten to know you more, I've learned that that's a really important thing for you to feel in a time of stress or conflict, even if you and I are maybe duking something, duking it out over something, you know, you like to feel the present physical presence there.

So that I also...

One thing that you and I have done recently that I really love, and I think I need to whip this out more often when it's in a time of stress.

We've started to do it regularly.

We've been off for a few weeks, but we'll go play basketball once a week, and that is...

That's a shared activity.

You really like to play basketball.

We have a lot of fun when we play together.

We have fun over kind of a shared...

It's also an aerobic exercise.

You get moving, and exercise can help against stress, so it kind of checks a lot of boxes.

So we've been doing that once a week.

We've taken a few off weeks with the move, and we had people visiting, which is all good stuff.

But I think there's great value in recognizing what the other person needs in a given moment and being able to do your level best to meet that need as a way to disarm their stress.

Oh, that's awesome.

I'm grateful you're my wife.

Does that help you when you're stressed?

And one of my favorite things, like you just smiled right there, and you have a really nice smile.

Oh, thanks, Chris.

So one of my favorite things is whenever we play basketball, we're not playing one-on-one.

We're just doing it around the world or playing horse or goofing off.

But your personality and watching you when you hit a big shot.

I've got a big reaction.

Yeah.

You'll celebrate, and you bring out the funny celebrations.

You'll be like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

Like dancing, dun.

You'll dance.

You'll go.

I like to make you laugh.

You'll talk trash.

So that is the funny part.

And I love being able to play basketball and shoot the ball, watch it go through the hoop.

That's a really nice feeling.

But to add that on there, it is very disarming.

Well, I'm glad that it's helpful for you.

Which is nice.

I'm glad I can make you laugh.

And even if there are weeks where I don't really want to go, I don't love playing basketball as much as you do, but I love spending time with you.

And I know that there has not been a time where we've gone to play basketball where we haven't had fun.

So it's good for me, too.

Even if you're the one who's primarily experiencing the stress, it's fun for me, too.

The other thing I would say, stress-wise, is food is one of my love languages.

It's not an actual love language, but you know.

So I'll make you one of your favorite dinners, or I'll bake you something.

Because that's one of the ways that I like to show love to people.

It's an act of service.

Yes.

Oh, I guess, yeah, act of service, yeah.

But Chris, I want to ask you, how do you process and cope with stress?

How would you say?

I kind of said talking it out, humor.

I mentioned in a relationship, shared activities, exercise.

I think I know.

But it's good for people to hear two different perspectives, especially when people are in a relationship.

Something I've wanted to get better at is the ability to express stress.

I think I've gotten a bit better at knowing when I am stressed.

So emotional awareness has really helped me out.

Insight.

Insight.

And then I've also been thinking about stress because I would identify with the opinion sometimes stress is good.

Oh, yeah, it can be adaptive.

There's good stress that can lead towards better performance, or it can lead towards paying more attention or pushing you somewhere where you may not be able to get to without it.

Can you give an example of when stress is good, like a specific one?

I have one that I always used to talk about in class, but...

Okay, I'm stressed currently.

And this morning, five hours at church, being on the broadcast, on the microphone, on the camera, coming home knowing that, shoot, I want to make sure I provide a good podcast.

If I didn't have that stress, I wouldn't be as intentional about, okay, let's get the studio together.

Okay, let's make sure...

You wouldn't be sitting here, probably.

You know, we're hosting people in less than an hour, right?

Yeah, we're currently hosting, and then we're hosting again, which is fun.

We're about to have visitors, which I love.

Yeah.

But I think in the moment, I feel a bit of stress, in like staying up late last night to get a project done.

And then...

So, but that stress, it's not sustainable.

Like, I'll probably chill sometime a little later today, because I feel it now.

Maybe I need to go on a walk, exercise, something like that.

Get some sunshine.

So, that'll help me deal with stress, but that's good stress, because I want to keep up with this podcast.

And I want to be intentional, and I want to have a conversation with you because you're brilliant.

And I want to make sure I get it, I capture it.

And I encourage others to keep up with connection, especially with the loved ones around them.

Like that question that I asked you, I had never asked you that before.

About how I handle stress?

Or like, maybe.

Yeah, like mentally, how you process it.

We've talked about so much stuff, but I don't know if I've explicitly, maybe we did it a while back, but I can't recall.

And I think that's important because we know one another decently well, and unearthing new things is hard nowadays.

And oftentimes, we don't exert the energy to do that.

But the podcast gives us the environment to go for it, which is so cool.

So I'm so grateful you're here.

But that's an example of good stress.

So you're getting better at recognizing internally when you're stressed.

When I'm stressed.

And I feel that, typically it's in my chest.

It's a bit tighter, and I'll want to take deep breaths.

And I think the exercise helps me because I get to walk and I get breathing.

And then another way that I deal with stress is trying to really dig deep about what exactly is my stress.

You know, because something that I've dealt with this year recently is like with my mom not being in good health.

That actually, and my mom listens to this.

She's one of our favorite listeners.

She's so sweet.

And sometimes I feel bad when I talk about this because I don't want her to feel bad.

But I will, if I actually dig deep enough, what I recognize is that my mom being in really bad, you know, like dealing with really aggressive cancer stresses me out.

But in my head, I kind of forget that that's stressing me out.

So I'll be like, Oh, I'm stressed about this podcast when really I'm stressed about her health.

And I think that's the case for a lot of people.

There may be financial stress that's hanging over your head.

You know, you have bills up, you know that.

Food insecurity.

And we're thinking, like, for instance, I was playing soccer the other day, and I wasn't being a jerk, but I was being more physical than I probably needed to.

It's not like I was fouling people, but there's still ways that you can play that's more physical.

And at the end of soccer, I'm sitting there, and it's like 7 a.m.

right?

And I'm like, Why?

Why was I playing like that?

And it took me a second to think, Oh, last night, I had a really hard phone call.

Yeah.

You know?

And I got information that wasn't happy.

And it was actually really sad.

And now, the next morning, I find myself upset.

But I'm actually not upset about the guys who are playing soccer.

I'm grateful for them that they're showing up to play soccer.

Without them, I wouldn't have this available.

But if we don't dig deep beyond that first layer to assess what's really going on, and I think that's the beauty of therapy, right?

You actually get to dig deep because a lot of us just live on the surface level.

I'm stressed out.

Yeah.

And almost ruminate about being stressed.

I do that.

I'm so stressed.

I'm so stressed.

And then that creates more stress and anxiety around just the idea or the feeling of stress itself without giving you any insight in digging deeper.

And therapy definitely helps with that.

But also to your point, Chris, about, you know, like a major family, somebody experiencing illness, it would be hard.

It would be, you know, I think that speaks to, you know, the kind of compassion, empathetic heart in the relationship that you have with your mom, that it does take up a lot of brain space as it would for, you know, anybody navigating something like that with family.

So it's hard.

It can be hard to separate, but you did.

You dug a little bit deeper.

And I think at the end of the day, it is how you can use those coping tools the best that you can.

But we're not always going to use them because at the end of the day, that's a big life stressor and a really hard thing that you're navigating.

So you can't always compartmentalize.

That's with something so big.

Yeah, you can't compartmentalize.

It's unnatural.

It'd be against your nature to tuck that away and pretend like nothing's happening, you know?

And especially if you strive for authenticity, right?

We will in our heads, be it if it's a in a congregation like in church, like be authentic, be a person of integrity or just outside of church.

Being a straight up person and not stabbing people in the back, being truthful about what you feel, that sounds really nice.

And it's such a cool philosophy when things is going nice.

But whenever you have to be truthful and people are saying, Oh, how is blank?

And you're like, well, not good.

Not good.

And it's kind of hard to say, like, not good.

It is hard to say.

But if you want to be authentic, then you need to be able to say it.

Can I ask you a question about the soccer example?

Did it, was your stress that you were experiencing and kind of the uncharacteristic, like you weren't yourself, right?

Would you agree with that?

You weren't yourself.

Did you, do you feel like it got to the point or did it get to the point where you had to say, Hey, guys, I'm sorry, I'm not only myself today.

I'm just experiencing, you know, some really hard stuff in my life, but I'm grateful that we're doing this.

Did you, maybe it wasn't to the point where you felt like you were so unlike yourself that other people noticed.

That's the other thing.

Oftentimes we think where people might notice that we're off more than they actually do.

Yeah, I've had a moment and I shared with you the story, but I'll quickly share it.

In undergrad at Central Oklahoma, I was a part of a college ministry recreational indoor soccer team.

Oh, yeah.

And we would go to, we drive into the city, I think, and go into this indoor soccerplex, show up, ten of us from the same ministry, and we would pray with the opposing team.

Now, we were the only college ministry team, so everybody else, they were playing soccer from the community.

But a lot of people would honor us and say, Yeah, we'd love to pray with you.

Sure, you could pray.

Some people weren't into it, whatever.

But I remember there was a game where we prayed, and at the very beginning, and my friend Caleb and I, we were the most proficient at soccer, so we were expected to score goals.

Yeah, lead the team.

To lead the team to victory.

There was probably a quarter of the game left, and we weren't doing well.

But in my head, I knew that if everything went well, if it went according to plan, we could win.

But Caleb came up to me, and he said, I can't do it, man.

I have to step out.

This is so frustrating, because our team was, it was just not fun.

They were doing really well, and our team was falling apart.

And whenever you feel like you can fix it, then you feel the pressure to stay.

And he said, I'm feeling that too much, I'm gonna sit out.

And I looked at him, I was like, all right, bro, go for it, but I'm staying in.

I'm gonna try and win this game.

We fired up.

I was fired up.

And I, shortly after that, I got the ball, and I start dribbling, and I take one person, two person, and I remember on the third person, I kicked the ball off the wall, because it's indoor, and we're both going for it, me and an older man, talking like 50 years old.

And I check him into the wall, and he crumples.

And as I check him into the wall, it was very excessive.

I extended my arm and everything.

But as I did that, I heard the ref blow the whistle.

And I knew it was an egregious foul, so I just walked off the field.

I didn't look at the ref, nothing.

And I sat on the bench feeling so ashamed, because it was this college ministry team that I just prayed for the opponents, and now I'm sitting here, and I get ejected from the game, and I have to watch my team lose.

And then the guy comes up to me, he's like, hey, you were actually a really good player, because I apologized to him.

He's like, you did so well.

And that was like the camel with kindness thing.

I was like, sheesh.

You were in a moment on the field when you body checked that man, and you knew that it was not a good...

I shouldn't have done that.

You shouldn't have done that.

You knew it was going to be a foul.

And I didn't remove myself even though I wasn't myself.

Right.

You were uncharacteristic.

It was out of character for you.

And you were so fired up that you couldn't really...

Like you were a little bit seeing red, right?

So you couldn't really process the way that you normally process, which happens a lot during sports, when people are really competitive.

So then the man...

How did that make you feel when the man came up to you that you knocked into the wall, and he said, you're really good?

Well, I didn't feel flattered.

No, yeah.

I felt ashamed.

You felt kind of achy about it.

Because that wasn't me.

And I was sad that he thought it was.

And I think in relationships, one of the best things we can do for one another is remind each other who we are.

Because stress is very deceiving.

And it makes us feel like people we aren't.

And can make us act like people we aren't.

Right.

And it manifests itself that way.

Yeah.

And it can be hard to get out of that mindset and behavior then.

So I think reminding one another of that, but also being there for one another, because we are bound to have stressful moments.

And when you hear about older couples, what you learn is oftentimes the stressful moments brings people together.

So positioning yourself to where pressure, if applied, will push you together.

And not pull you apart.

Rather than pull you apart.

And you can intentionally position yourself in ways like that.

I think I like that, Chris.

I like that visual.

Right.

If you imagine two magnets, and if you flip them correctly, they'll come together.

But if you don't, then they're going to be, no matter how much pressure.

And you can even put it the other way to where you'll put the pressure on the inverse, and the more pressure, the further apart you get.

Yeah.

So you can intentionally choose to be vulnerable, to share, to talk, to go on walks, to do that self care for yourself, so that your relationship doesn't get hurt.

Yeah, I love that.

I feel like we hit on a lot of them.

You just did a quick recap of a lot of those strategies.

Humor is a huge buffer against stress.

Yeah, it is.

Taking time to invest in your relationships.

I took a whole class at Wake Forest, all about interpersonal relationships and stress, how we cope, and how adaptive it is to have strong interpersonal relationships as a buffer against stress.

And you can invest in those in different ways.

We talked about a lot of them, and you can manage conflict.

We talked about, we covered a lot of ground today.

We did.

You are, you're helping me out a lot here, because being able to talk to you is one of the favorite things about the podcast, that I can capture it, because you are my wife and you're the woman that I chose to marry.

And being able to do this with you in this domain is special to me, because I'm really lucky that not only are you so sweet and supportive, but you're also able to operate in this domain, and you enjoy it.

Oh, well, Chris, I really I love you so much, and I'm so grateful that I get to talk to you on the pod.

I'm grateful that we've got each other to manage stress.

You do a great job helping me when I'm I can be very anxious and stressed, and I can be sour at times, and you really can help pull me out of that.

Yeah, it's worth it.

Yeah, yeah, it's well worth it.

Ditto.

I wouldn't have it a different way.

So I'm grateful for you.

The title will be How to Navigate Stress as a Couple.

Or what do you think it should be?

Oh, I don't know.

But can I leave with a not a final?

I mean, it doesn't have to be a final thought.

Do you want to end with some rapid fires to bookend it?

No, go ahead.

One of my thoughts I've I've stood by this thought for a long time.

Once again, don't practice it all the time, because nobody bats a thousand at anything that we've said before.

But I think if you can use small stressors in life as a way to prepare and equip you for larger stressors that you will encounter, I think that's a very beneficial and adaptive perspective to have.

So what we're going through now, how can we use that?

Yes, it's going to be hard in moments, but how can we use that to build on the next thing that we encounter?

You know, constantly doing better in navigating things in a more adaptive way when we're stressed.

And that's why you're here, to give thoughts like that, because the little stressors are inevitable, just like the mundane conversations.

We need them.

Yep.

When we learn how to navigate them, it's going to bring us to bigger things, better things.

Thank you for being here.

I love you.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me on.

I love it.

Love the pod.

I love you.

Hey, they love you.

We love you.

Do you know how to sign off?

I always want to go rogue with the sign off.

I'll do it for you.

See you next time, folks.