How Stress is

Holding You Back

Ep. 183 with Dr. Kelly Bender

“What you’re feeling and what you’re attributing it to may not be correlated.”

Dr. Kelly Bender

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Bio

Dr. Bender is a California licensed Naturopathic Medical Doctor. As a graduate of Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, Dr. Bender is trained as an expert in natural medicine. After graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacology & Toxicology from the University at Buffalo and top of her class in medical school, she has continued her training in cutting edge therapies. Ketamine assisted therapy, regenerative medicine, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy and peptide therapy have been important additions to her practice to truly help individuals heal. She is passionate about helping individuals optimize their health so they can live their lives to the fullest. Dr. Bender believes it is important to understand the entire person in order to facilitate healing and offers each patient an individualized treatment plan to enhance their vitality. Dr. Bender enjoys teaching others, whether it be her patients or students at various medical schools. While she misses the fall weather back home in New York, she is happy to make Los Angeles her home.

Show Notes

What is stress holding you back from? Where is the stress coming from? Dr. Kelly joins the podcast to talk about stressors that we may be able to control and how to shake out stress to live a fully healthy life.

If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected]. Or leave a comment below!

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

In this episode you will learn about:

  • How to manage stress well
  • Signs your body is stressed out
  • Things to identify stressors and de-stress
  • Under eating is contributing to your stress
  • Are you creating a story to contribute to the anxiety?
  • How to work through the emotions, so stress doesn’t hold you back

Episode References/Links:

Transcript

INTRODUCTION

Lesley Logan
Hi, Be It babe. Okay, this is so fun. So what is actually really cool about this episode is I actually just got to see my guest in real life at the time of this recording, at the time this is coming out. It, I have no idea when that was. But what I’m so excited about is that Dr. Bender is one of the most amazing, smartest women that I ever know. And I love to chat with her about things I’ve heard on a podcast or a study I’ve read or whatever about medical science, all these things, and then she explains it because y’all there are so many things that can affect as being it till we see it. Like there just is and I know every once in a while I pop in a medical thing either to advocate for yourself or just information and that this is one of those episodes. So this episode, we are going to talk about stress. And we could have probably talked for hours, hours and hours about stress, signs and symptoms of stress, what stress is. We really did dive in, in a way that I think you can ac… you will actually use this right now in your daily life today. But I am telling you, I’m so fascinated about what came out towards the end about what can cause stress, and it is insane. And, and also like holy crap, we might be causing ourselves more stress, just trying to reason with ourselves. So what I hope you get out of this is that one, I want you to be it till you see it in all the ways in life that you can be. And that could actually like the if you’re a perfectionist and overachiever that can actually cause some stress. But if you be it till you see it as a person who is achieving what you want, having the life you live with ease, ease in your life, that’s this is the be it till I see it that I’m trying to do is have those things with ease. What a great, what a great way to practice being it till you see it is a no way of dealing with your stress in your body and in your life. And so you might be like, “Ah Les, my life is good. I got things going on but not stressed out.” Please still listen, because a) there’s some things you can share with people, right? I’ve got a few coaching calls this month, where we’re really talking about ways that people can handle the stress that they’re going through, because there’s no way to avoid what they are going through. So how do we handle it. And also, you might not actually re… it might be recognizing that the signs and symptoms that you’re feeling are because of stress, because you may have been going through them for so long. So I cannot wait to hear your takeaways about this. I’m really, really excited to have this guest back. If you have not heard her original episode, we talked a lot about hormones go back to that. Then when we ended, we had another topic that I’ll have to bring her on with, that I’m really excited about so my team will remind me we’ll bring her on because well she has a wealth of knowledge, she is the most smartest fucking woman I know. And there are several things in our bodies, in our lives and what makes us up as a human being that can affect us doing the things that we want to do in this lifetime that are that we are not aware of and if we are aware of them, we can take actions to allow and make accommodations for that. So my loves, here is Dr. Bender.

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Lesley Logan
Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I’m Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I’ve trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it’s the antidote to fear. Each week, my guests will bring Bold, Executable, Intrinsic and Targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It’s a practice, not a perfect. Let’s get started.

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EPISODE

Lesley Logan
All right, Be It babe. I’m so excited because I have one of my besties in life. And we’ve had her on the podcast before. So you’ll reme… you’ll recognize her voice if you’ve been a longtime listener. And almost first time caller, but y’all don’t call in so. But I have Dr. Bender here and we, I was chatting with her on her first episode with us. And we didn’t even get into stress. We got into all the thing about hormones and was amazing. But one of the things I talked to her a lot about is stress and something I have noticed in coaching a lot of businesses and also just teaching people Pilates in general, is that our goals tend to stress perfectionists out like crazy. So, so then these perf… so if you’re a perfectionist, hello, I’m recovering one. And so I see you and I have I totally understand the stress of like your goals and like all the things you want to do in this life. And unfortunately, like some stress is very good. Like it’s good for your bones. It’s like good for a diamond, making a diamond, but it also can cause us some crazy trauma, stress, all the stuff that’s redundant stress and stress. But Dr. Bender, welcome back. I’m so happy to have you here. And I, before we get into like why, you know, stress is bad, can we or can be bad? Can we talk about like who you are and what you actually do in the world? So people who don’t know you yet can hear how you’re so amazing.

Dr. Kelly Bender
Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me back. I’m really, really excited to be here. And I think it’s good timing to be talking about stress, and how that affects our body. And you know what our body actually does with the stress. So I am a Naturopathic Medical Doctor, I live in Los Angeles, California, I have a clinic here called Pure Vitality Rejuvenation Center. We’re expanding and we’re growing, which is exciting. And at our center, we really look at people as a whole, right? We’re looking at your hormones and your gut and your mental health and all those things. We’re looking at your nutrition and your habits and your diet and you know, all the different pieces and how that comes together to create health or disease, right. And so we do lab testing and things like that. I’ve over the last several years also gotten into a lot of mental health, with patients do some psychedelic work with patients, we refer out for lots of different options for people. And so stress over the last few years in the pandemic has really become a focus of mine, partially because that’s just what everyone is needing right now.

Lesley Logan
Right. I mean, like, I think we’re all a little bit on an interesting level of stress. And especially when you live in LA, there’s just the daily stress of surviving life in a city that drives that should be on strains. But then, like you’ve layer on a pandemic of uncertainty and all those changes and all that stuff. And something that I admire about you is like I’ve we’ve known each other for so many years, and I’ve watched you grow your business, as you mentioned you’re expanding. And, you know, it’s not that you don’t ever have stress in your life, but you somehow know how to manage it well. And I think that is something we’ll have to get into. But can we talk about like what maybe like maybe some people are so stressed out they don’t even know what non stressed out is like, can we talk about signs and symptoms that you’re stressed out just for the people who might be like, “I’m not stressed.” And they’re like, act like their families like, “She’s so stressed.”

Dr. Kelly Bender
Yeah. It’s so interesting, I had this conversation with a friend of mine who’s also a doctor. And so often we’ve been habituated to feel like this is normal, right. And stress can show up in a lot of different ways for a lot of different people. Sometimes it shows up as skin conditions. So when people are really stressed out, sometimes they can have, you know, like rashes or skin issues. GI symptoms, right are really, really related to stress oftentimes, and so it can range anything from chronic diarrhea, constipation, not being hungry. This is like one of the big things. I have women come in all the time, and they’re like, “I wake up, and I’m not hungry, and I don’t have to eat till two o’clock.” You’re not hungry, because your body is in fight or flight, not rest and digest, right? Even when you’re sleeping, you’re stressed out, we’ll talk about cortisol and all those hormone components, but you’re not hungry, because your body is stressed out and isn’t able to digest and your digestion is not running smoothly. It can have hormone, you know impacts. So anything from weight gain, irregular menstrual cycles, you know, spotting things like that? headaches, muscle tightness, right, so like clenching your jaw is a big one that we just don’t always think about, because it’s so habitual, right, tight shoulders. It’s really interesting to me, when patients come in, they really don’t even know that they have these symptoms, because they’re so dissociated from their body. And this, I would say, is a really difficult symptom to pinpoint yourself. But it’s probably one of the bigger, simpler things, right? People are so out of touch with their body, they’re literally dissociated from it. So they say, “Oh, I don’t feel pain. Oh, I feel fine.” And you start digging a little bit more, and they’re not registering their discomfort, but it doesn’t mean that their body isn’t experiencing pain, or abnormalities or things like that. They’re just so stressed. They don’t …

Lesley Logan
Yeah, it’s like, our, our bodies are so good at protecting us that it can protect us from ourselves. Like, it’s such a crazy thing to think about. But I some of those symptoms you brought up I find, you know, I think so many people can go, “Oh, I just ate something bad” or “Oh, I’m allergic to that,” or “Oh, what I wonder what I ate because it didn’t sit well with me.” And it’s like, okay, how long because when I was with my stomach issues, what I realized is actually, sometimes the things that you’re upsetting your stomach are from, like three days ago, so it’s so it’s actually not you just ate in this moment. So if you’re having that reaction, it might actually be because you’re stressed.

Dr. Kelly Bender
Well, and then, you know, some of the biggest ones are poor sleep, changes in your mood. So, you know, people don’t always know I think I think a lot of people know, like, “Oh, I’m not sleeping well, and I’m worried about something.” But sometimes I have patients come in and they’re like, “I’m I’m not stressed at all. But I’m not sleeping well. And I’m fatigued. And I have to rely on coffee to get up in the morning.” And you know, all those all those things?

Lesley Logan
Yeah. Yeah. And I I also wonder, like we think I think we are also thinking like stress is something that is easy to pinpoint. We know why we’re stressed out. It’s because there’s something stressful happening in the moment as opposed to like, chronic, like, just living in an uncertain world for two years with your kids at home and having to change, you know, your entire lifestyle, and then change it back and then be unsure if you did it right. And you know, all that stuff. So like, all that stuff is just like, it’s almost like a little layer. It’s like a warming a frog up and up on a pot. You don’t even notice that you you’re hit stress too much. Can stress can stress, um, is there any kind of stress that’s actually okay for us to have? Are we supposed to like try to be zen all the time?

Dr. Kelly Bender
Great question. So I think the word stress is really interesting. And I use that sometimes with patients, especially when when I’m talking about hormones or GI function. I’ll say like, oh, there are these stressors on the body. And patients immediately when they think of stress, think of like mental emotional stress or anxiety. And while while there’s probably some benefit to short bursts of even mental emotional stress, right? If something is stressing you out from a mental emotional standpoint, to me, that’s an indicator that that’s something that’s important to you. And maybe that’s a boundary, right. So if you’re stressed out about something, maybe that’s because somebody’s pushing your boundary and really, you should be holding that boundary. Right. Or, you know, there’s other benefits to sort of acute stressors. Same thing with the body. So, you know, with exercise, I have a lot of women that come in more pre pandemic than then post but pre pandemic, I would have a lot of women come in, who are having hormone issues, trouble losing weight, fertility issues. And one of the stressors that we talked about, one of the stressors on the body was, they were actually working out too much. They would be doing like intense intense workouts 5 6 7 times a day, right or seven times a week, you know, sometimes doubling up doing like 10 in a week. And they weren’t fueling their body enough. So they were also like in a calorie deficit. And those are actually stressors on the body. Fasting is a stressor on the body, hold is a stressor on the body. And those things have benefit when you do them in particular ways for short amounts of time. Right? (Lesley: Right.) So …

Lesley Logan
Like I’m gonna do a two minute cold shower in the morning, (Dr. Kelly Bender: Right.) but I’m not taking, I’m not I’m not sitting in a cold pool for the day.

Dr. Kelly Bender
Exactly, exactly. And so human bodies actually do really well, when we have these little stressors, right? When we when we get not even little stressors, but acute short acting stressors, right? Adrenaline comes from our adrenal glands. That’s why it’s called adrenaline. The other name for adrenaline is epinephrine. Right? So those are the same molecule. You know, you see on movies, somebody has like, like, has died. And they take the EpiPen, and they like jab it into their heart, right? And they give them adrenaline and then like … adrenaline, right? Adrenaline is this fast acting, short lived molecule in your body, where if somebody cuts you off in traffic, or you see a bear in nature, you have this flood of this hormone that’s supposed to help you get very focused, very clear, very present. And get out of that situation. That’s adaptive, right? But if you are constantly living in a state of these, these sort of, you know, there’s bears all around you and you’re living with these bears for 10 years, and the bears are actually your bosses at work, but you have that same response. Then instead of epinephrine or adrenaline being the main driver, cortisol becomes the main driver. And this is, this puts like weight around our middles cortisol, prolonged stress of any kind, whether it’s emotional, or physical stressors, actually shrinks our brain. (Lesley: Stop it.) It’s crazy. It actually shrinks our brain like the white matter in our brain. They’ve done imaging like an actually atrophies certain parts of our brain, specifically, the ones that are associated with like memory, emotions, some of our … (Lesley: This is crazy.) functioning …

Lesley Logan
So it’s that like I mean, I don’t put you on the spot. But like, is that what’s happening? Like, is that a correlation to Alzheimer’s and dementia going up? Like as we don’t know that yet?

Dr. Kelly Bender
We don’t, I don’t know that we know that specifically, I would say maybe dementia, and certainly some of some of what we experience as older people. And a lot of my patients in their 40s and 50s are exhibiting signs and symptoms that we would associate with like early Alzheimer’s and early dementia, but it’s not it’s just the cortical atrophy. Alzheimer’s and dementia are multifactorial, there’s probably so now they’re calling Alzheimer’s, type three diabetes. There’s a … yeah, (Lesley: That’s so crazy.) crazy. So there’s a really big metabolic component with sugar and sugar utilization in the brain, which probably does stem from in some part, cortisol and stress hormones. Because cortisol changes how your body metabolizes sugar, it stores fat, you’re less likely to be able to utilize sugar well. So there there absolutely may be a correlation and they probably don’t make each other better.

Lesley Logan
Yeah. So this is so this is so interesting, because I do have I remember when I when I lived in LA, and I’m sure it still exists in other cities, not just there, but I, I would see these women who had go to two or three workouts a day, they were in that calorie deficit. And it is not healthy. It’s not healthy for I would watch their skin. It was like all these things that they’re like, well, now I got to do this because my skin is like this. It’s like well, it’s not supposed to work out like that. And the other thing is like what we have also learned is that like women’s workout should not look like men. So you can’t you’re not doing two days with the dudes, we have different hormones, we have different things and so we have to be more diligent about listening to our body and also giving it what it needs when it needs it. And we can’t do that. So stressed out or disassociated from our own body to know what it needs. (Dr. Kelly Bender: Exactly.) So, okay, what … Because you’re not our doctor for every single person who’s listening, what are, so what what are the rules and the rules of where you can, you know, give advice here? What are some things people can do to identify stress and then also like de stress, like, what can they …

Dr. Kelly Bender
Yeah, literally so, you know, the little disclaimer is, I am not your doctor if you’re listening, or maybe I am, and if you’re my patient, hello. But for the majority of you, I’m not your doctor. So consult your doctor, before you do anything. That’s just like a little disclaimer. So stress, I would say we break down, I break down stress into sort of two main categories, which is physical stressors, and then sort of psychological emotional stressors. (Lesley: Okay.) Physical stressors are like we talked about fasting or calorie deficit, exercise, cold, extreme cold, extreme heat, those things, when done in a certain way can be really beneficial. But again, when done in an unhealthy way, not good for the body. So a lot of the research is coming out. Previously, there was very little research on intermittent fasting for women who were still menstruating. All the research was done in either men or postmenopausal women. And so there’s a lot of menstruating women who saw the research didn’t realize that they weren’t part of that study, started doing it. And that’s probably not great, a great stressor for hormones and for cortisol and those types of things. Certainly, during certain parts of your cycle, probably not ideal. Like you talked about doing short, short, cold exposures, right. So up to a few minutes, is actually really good for the body, doing hot exposures for short amounts of time, good for the body. Not sleeping is a huge physiologic stressor. So you know, identifying where maybe some of your habits or things are not optimal prioritizing sleep, you know, rest and recovery, if you’re if you’re exercising, not being careful not to over exercise, you know, not to significantly under eat prioritizing proteins, things like that, sort of fall under that physical physiologic stressor.

Lesley Logan
Yeah. I think a lot of people don’t realize how they might actually be under eating, or at least under eating in the certain nutrients. Like, even my own father, he was trying to lose some weight and, and he’s like, “I’m not eating that much food.” And I’m like, “I think that’s the problem.” (Dr. Kelly Bender: That is the problem.) That you’re not eating enough for how active you are. And so your body is holding on to everything, because it’s so freaked out. So can we get you some more books, like, let’s just spend a week just looking at what you’re eating and just seeing what days you’re consistently under eating. So we can figure that out?

Dr. Kelly Bender
Yep. And the timing of what of when you’re eating. So keeping blood sugar regulated, keeping blood sugar stable, makes it so that all of your hormones, like your cortisol, your ghrelin, your leptin, your your glucagon, like all of those things aren’t fluctuating and going crazy, because you can be under eating. So here’s the thing, you can be under eating calories most days, and then on the weekend, you’re like, oh, you know, I eat a normal amount of calories or a little bit more. And, and because overall, you’re having more calories than you need at certain times, your body is going to store that. Right. (Lesley: Right.) So so making sure that you are eating enough for what you’re trying to do with your body. But visceral fat specifically, is really hormonally driven. So even if you’re under eating, but your cortisol is high, you’re you’re just going to have a really hard time especially getting rid of that visceral fat.

Lesley Logan
Yeah. That’s the dangerous stuff anyways.

Dr. Kelly Bender
That’s the dangerous stuff. You’re probably going to start breaking down muscle or not being able to gain muscle. So there’s all those those pieces. So just being aware, right of, of what do I need. And I know this sounds cliche, but mindfulness, right, just getting back into your body, doing any sort of activities that gets you back in touch with your body. I love dancing, like I just, I that’s always been a thing that I love. And it really puts me back in touch with my body and so, so I’ll do like dance classes or, or I’ll just take 10 minutes in between patients and have a little dance party to bring me back down into my body. That oftentimes, two things one, it’s again going to help you if you are slightly disassociated and not in touch with your body. And two, oftentimes those sorts of activities are, are stress relieving in and of themselves, right? (Lesley: Yeah.) So mindfulness meditation, just focusing on your breath is an attempt to get you reconnected to your body.

Lesley Logan
Yeah. And what I love about those suggestions are like, mostly free, like you can, (Dr. Kelly Bender: Mostly free.) you can, you can turn on free music probably somewhere and dance to it. And it can be the same song every day, you know, until you need a new one. And you can just sit and intentionally think about your breathing because that’s not something we have to intentionally do all the time. That’s so so you mentioned like the physical signs of stressors and like some things there. There’s also I think, the mental there’s another stress, yeah.

Dr. Kelly Bender
You know like mental, emotional, psychosocial, whatever you want to call what a lot of people when they think of stress, that’s what they’re thinking of, right? They’re thinking of symptoms of anxiety, racing thoughts being nervous or worried or anxious about things that are happening. And so it’s really interesting. Two things I’ll say about that. One, very often in humans, we we are storytellers, humans are storytellers. We are meaning makers. We like to know what that thing means in our life. And so oftentimes, people have physical reactions that feel like stress. So one of the big ones is actually histamine. So histamine is like if you have seasonal allergies, you know (Lesley: Yeah.) about histamines. Right. (Lesley: Yeah.) Histamine is a is something that our immune system produces, that can produce rashes, itchy, itchy eyes, runny nose, congestion, like all of the signs of like seasonal allergies. Histamine, when it gets into the brain, makes you feel anxious. racing heart, it can give you stomach issues, all of these things. And so sometimes people just have a histamine reaction, because they’ve come in contact with something that releases histamine. Unfortunately, chocolate can be a trigger sometimes. There are these high histamine foods. But I’m seeing this a lot post COVID. People’s histamine trigger is just, it’s just a hair trigger, (Lesley: Wow!) where before things didn’t bother them at all. Now they’re having anxiety, they’re having trouble sleeping, they’re getting some rashes, but their body feels, right. (Lesley: Right.) They just they know like, they’ve drink coffee all day long …

Lesley Logan
Yeah. That’s crazy because … to be like mindful breath work, and you’re just doing this thing like, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. And it’s like, actually, there’s no it’s just the … the histamine is histamine, your brain, we got to get that out.

Dr. Kelly Bender
… of your brain. And the crazier thing is, most often humans will make up a reason that they’re anxious. Right? So they feel … (Lesley: Oh, we have to …) they feel anxious in their body, from the histamine from whatever it is they they feel anxious, their heart is racing, right. And they don’t attribute it to a high histamine food that they consumed, or the fact that they came in contact with a cat because they don’t always necessarily get like, allergies that we think of allergies, but the histamines in the brain, and so they feel anxious. And then they’re like, oh, I started feeling anxious when I started, they just happened to be thinking about going to work. This is all subconscious, right. But your brain says, oh, you started feeling this way when you started thinking about this thing. This thing is making you feel that way. And then you start coming up with reasons, oh, I’m anxious because maybe I’m thinking my boss is going to be mean like you actually attribute meaning where there is no meaning.

Lesley Logan
So then you just start telling yourself a story. And so now your poor boss has done nothing to cause you stress. You think your boss is calling to do stress, and it’s never gonna go away. Because you have histamine.

Dr. Kelly Bender
And then here’s the here’s the here’s the even crazier part, if that histamine goes away, but you have had that same thought pattern so many times, you will actually train your brain to become anxious when thinking about that topic.

Lesley Logan
Oh, I believe that gets to habit because there’s you there’s, yes, that’s how habits are created. Like we create them based on emotions in the brain, it releases something so now oh, and what’s so crazy is people could be like leaving partners or jobs that had nothing to do with. Oh, my God.

Dr. Kelly Bender
So we literally then train our brain that this thing or this person or this situation was making us anxious. And then let’s say you stop eating that food or you get out of that environment. You’re no longer triggered with the histamine, the histamine goes away. But you’ve actually reprogrammed your brain to have an anxious reaction to that topic.

Lesley Logan
So why we need everyone needs to take Byron Katie’s Four Questions instead of trying to make meaning. Just ask yourself, “How do I know this is real?”

Dr. Kelly Bender
Right. Absolutely. And so it’s been really wild, especially post COVID. Like I said, I’ve seen so many people have this, you know, hair trigger on their histamine. There is a supplement. And I’m not recommending anyone take this supplement. This is just for educational purposes. But there is a supplement called DAO, which is a I think it’s diamino oxidase, but it’s the enzyme that actually breaks down histamine in your body. So anti histamine medication blocks histamine from docking at the receptors. But there’s tons of different histamine receptors in the body, there’s h1, h2, there’s like all these different ones. And it only blocks it in some of these places. And it doesn’t necessarily block the places that make you feel anxious. So in some people it does, some people it doesn’t. But if you take an anti histamine and you’re like, “I’m so anxious, and now I’m tired.” It doesn’t mean that it’s not the histamine. (Lesley: Right.) It could be that the histamine wasn’t blocked at the proper receptor from the medication. (Lesley: Right.) So DAO is an enzyme that actually eats up and breaks down the histamine faster. It’s like taking a lactaid pill if you’re lactose intolerant.

Lesley Logan
Got it. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So we shouldn’t just go out and run out and take the supplement, because you actually probably don’t want to block histamine, unnecessarily.

Dr. Kelly Bender
I mean, there’s low risk to it, but like, talk to your doctor, you know, (Lesley: Yeah.) your doctor kind of a thing. (Lesley: Yeah.) But it is, it’s, it’s really interesting.

Lesley Logan
Yeah. That is so crazy. So then I love for talking about this. Because at the beginning of this, before we recorded, like, it was like, how can we, like people understand that stress is could be, either they could be stressing themselves out to become the next person. Or now that we’ve heard about histamine, we could be telling ourselves an entire story. We’re just keeping us from being it till we see.

Dr. Kelly Bender
Completely. I would say that it’s actually a another reason to be it till you see it is because what you’re feeling and what you’re attributing it to, may actually not be correlated. Right? It you may be thinking, “Oh, I’m anxious about doing this podcast, because because I actually have impostor syndrome, and all these things.” But your brain is just coming up with a reason that seems rational, (Lesley: Yeah.) why your body’s having a certain response.

Lesley Logan
That’s so, wow, it’s, it’s so cra… It’s so crazy.

Dr. Kelly Bender
Like, you can be like, “Okay, I made like, my body feels anxious.” But that is one of the biggest thing is like, let your body have whatever response it’s having to move energy through. So my Tantra coach, (Lesley: Yeah.) one of the things we work on is emotions and worried is an emotion and you know, stressors and things like that. (Lesley: Yeah.) They’re just energy in the body, let it move through. Don’t hold try to hold on to them. Don’t come up with a story about why you’re sad, why you’re angry. Discharge that, that emotion and that energy and that feeling. (Lesley: Yeah.) Then see what happens. Because most of the time we come up with a reason why our body feels the way they are. It’s irrelevant.

Lesley Logan
Yeah. Oh, that is so key. And it made me think of a couple things. So I just want to touch on this, y’all just you can move it out. Like you can just identify it like I’m feeling this way. And like, I don’t, you don’t have to go I wonder why it’s just like I’m feeling this way, period. And then like, but also not to mask it because that’s going to cause more stress. So my favorite annual read is The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks and he talks about those like seven signs that you are upper limiting yourself so when you upper limiting yourself it’s because you stepped outside of your comfort zone and you’re kind of in your niche like you’re in your flow of what’s coming up next, right. It’s that new thing that you’ve been wanting to have, that new schedule, that new job or that new relationship. Whatever it is and you’re like you’re like in it and it like feel so good and then your brains like, fuck this scares me I don’t actually know where we’re turning left yet. I actually don’t know where the death. I don’t there’s too many unknowns come back. And the way that he gets his comeback is through worry, self deprecation, picking fights. You get sick, like you literally just start getting sick. So there’s these things and what is so interesting is now that I’m thinking about a lot of them are stressful feeling in the body. So you could be literally stressing yourself out to hold yourself back.

Right. Or you could hold yourself back by just having a feeling of stress or unease in your body that is completely unrelated to the thing you’re holding yourself back from. So holding yourself back won’t even alleviate that anxiety. Because it’s like, okay, you got to stop eating that food, you have to, you know, get an air purifier in your house, you know, whatever it is.

Yeah, so fascinating. Okay, I mean, gosh, I love you. And I could keep talking to forever. But I feel like, what I hope everyone listening is that you got to really understand it like different ways we can cause stress on ourselves in a way that is not helpful. And then, and then identifying it is just the actual feeling versus making meaning out of it is the most important to identify and skip the meaning part, go make meaning of like, why the sky is blue, you know? Find another non stressful way to make meaning in life. We’re gonna come back and just quick second, find out where people can find you, follow you know more about what you’re doing in this planet, and also your BE IT action items. (Dr. Kelly Bender: Great.) All right, Dr. Bender, where do you hang out? Where can people if they were in the area, where can they work with you?

Dr. Kelly Bender
Yes. So Pure Vitality Rejuvenation Center in Brentwood, Los Angeles. You can go to purevitalitycenter.com. And check us out on the website. We’re we’re going to be starting to do TikTok. I’m super excited. We’re gonna sort of restart our social media presence. We’re also opening up in West Hollywood. So we’ll be there. Go go online, check it out. There’s lots of interesting things. I’ll be making some content. Yeah.

Lesley Logan
Yeah. So I can’t wait for your medical TikTok. I really am excited. Because I feel like I’m gonna learn something more, when I’ll actually open up my TikTok app. And you know what? I just have to say, y’all, if you are in either of those areas, you got to go in because talk about like, making meaning and causing stress. I went in to your offices when I was in LA, to get an IV because I was like, gosh, I just I’m like I’m feeling a little under the weather like, but I was like, I can’t be sick. Maybe I felt like this because this is going on, maybe I feel like this is because this is going on. Got the IV and I’m like no dehydrated, lack of nutrition wasn’t doing my normal morning routine for three weeks. So there’s nothing to make meaning of. I just needed my body just needed nutrition. (Dr. Kelly Bender: … needed the things.) Yes. (Dr. Kelly Bender: Yeah.) So so BE IT action items. I’m really happy to have you on. Y’all last time, I don’t want to like, you know, I have no idea what she’s gonna say. But I just wanted to say to all of you her last BE IT action item when she was on shift to listen that show we’ll put it in the show notes below. One of our listeners reported back that she did it and she made money doing it. So just saying these BE IT action items if you actually use them, they’re very beneficial.

Dr. Kelly Bender
Yeah, I was gonna I don’t know how to follow that one up, right? Like if I was … that was like the best my best action item. Yeah, I would say my action item for for this one, especially like stress related and things like that is, if you can, if you can do any sort of presence, body, like getting back into your body. So you know, so movements, great Pilates, dance, any of those things, sort of like get back into your body, I think doing that and then reassessing, like, “Is this my body feeling this way and just letting it discharge.” Right. So sometimes shaking is a really, really, really helpful way to just discharge energy. So just like your whole body, just like shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. And that can just discharge whatever that emotion or energy is.

Lesley Logan
You know, I love that it’s true. Like, you can just like, you know, let it out, let the anxiety out, let that out. I mean, not that we’re dogs, but like, my dogs will like stretch when they want to stretch. And then all of a sudden, they’ll just be like saying, like, shake whatever is happening to them. I’m like, they know what, they just do it. They don’t ask permission. They just do what they’re feeling. We should all do that. It’s gonna be okay, no one’s gonna like what does that person doing? Trust me, they’re so busy trying to make meaning of whatever stressors in their life, they’re not paying attention to you.

Dr. Kelly Bender
I can’t tell you how many patients like I’ll see them and they’re just I see them sitting like this. Right? And I’m like, Are you okay? I’m fine. There so disconnected. That’s like, Okay, we’re gonna we’re gonna shake together. Right. And then doing it together. It’s cool. And then they’re completely like, it just changes the whole thing. So, yeah, if you’re feeling if you’re feeling anything, shake.

Lesley Logan
Yeah, I love that. I love it. I love you. You’re so amazing. I learned so much being around you and y’all how are you going to use these tips, this information in your life. We want to know. Tag Dr. Bender, tag at the @be_it_pod. Let us know if you have questions about this, send it to the @be_it_pod. Brad and I can answer things on the recap episode and until next time, Be It Till You See It.

Lesley Logan
That’s all I’ve got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate this show and leave a review. And, follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over on IG at the @be_it_pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us help others to BE IT TILL YOU SEE IT. Have an awesome day!

Lesley Logan
Be It Till You See It is a production of Bloom Podcast Network.

Brad Crowell
It’s written, produced, filmed and recorded by your host Lesley Logan. And me Brad Crowell. Our associate producer is Amanda Frattarelli.

Lesley Logan
Kevin Perez at Disenyo handles all of our audio editing.

Brad Crowell
Our theme music is by Ali at APEX Production Music. And our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.

Lesley Logan
Special thanks to our designer Mesh Herico for creating all of our visuals, (which you can’t see because this is a podcast) and our digital producer, Jay Pedroso for editing all the video each week, so you can.

Brad Crowell
And to Angelina Herico for transcribing each episode, so you can find it on our website. And finally to Meridith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.

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