How to protect your emotional health during the holidays | Guy Winch
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We are in the heart of the holiday season now, and this time of year can be emotionally fraught, and we know that. So even if it is not, the end of one year and the start of a new one is always prime time for self-reflection.

So there are few better voices on emotional health than psychologist and author Guy Winch, who joins TED curator Whitney Pennington-Rogers to talk through the idea of emotional first aid and why it is so crucial, especially during this time of year. Now, here's that conversation.

Well, it's officially December, the 12th and final month of 2024, and you might be feeling a lot of different things right now. The excitement of the holiday season, the anxiety of trying to accomplish those last minute things, maybe the relief of making it to the homestretch of what may have been a long and eventful year. The fear, perhaps, of having to hit the ground running in just a few short weeks when the calendar rolls over to January.

And this is just my list. I'm sure there are many emotions you might be feeling that I've missed, but I say all of this to say that this time of year can really be a lot.

And our guest today, he knows this. We are so lucky to be here with Guy Winch, who is here to share his insight and tips for gliding through the next few weeks with confidence and poise and above all else, emotional stability. He's a psychologist and an author of acclaimed books like Emotional First Aid, The Squeaky Wheel, and How to Fix a Broken Heart. And his three TED Talks have collectively been viewed more than 32 million times.

please give a warm welcome to the extraordinary, the phenomenal Guy Winch. Hello, Whitney. Hi, Guy. Thank you so much for being here with us today. It is my pleasure.

Well, let's dive right on in. Your first talk is called Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid, where you make the case for taking care of your emotions in the same way we take care of our bodies. So first, could you talk to us a little bit about this idea? In broad strokes, what does practicing emotional first aid look like? And how has your thinking on this changed since you gave this talk in 2015? Yeah.

Well, we sustain emotional wounds in life just as often as we do physical ones, wounds like rejection or failure or heartbreak or loneliness. And these kinds of experiences can impact us in dramatic ways. They can affect our functioning and our mood and our relationship and our mental state and everything about us. And they are wounds that can be treated. It just doesn't occur to us.

to think of those kinds of experiences as wounds, and it doesn't occur to us to be able to treat them, even though there are tools and techniques we could use to do just that with the goal of minimizing the pain they cause, minimizing the loss of function that comes with it, and healing ourselves more healthily so that these wounds don't become infected or get worse if we neglect them.

Now, when I started talking about this idea 10 years ago, the idea seemed quite novel to a lot of people, this comparison between emotional wounds and physical wounds and the idea that we need to treat emotional wounds. I think after the pandemic, there is more openness to this idea in general about emotional health, in general that our emotions and our emotional health has an impact on our lives a lot because of what we went through during the pandemic.

But if you would have asked me 10 years ago where I hope we would be today, I would have hoped we would be somewhere better.

And unfortunately, I think we're somewhere worse. Today, there is an epidemic of loneliness that's global and that's hitting hard the teens, young adults, these young age groups and who are suffering tremendously from loneliness. We know that stress in the workplace now is at an all-time high as are symptoms of burnout.

among employees. And so there's a lot going on in the world in which our emotional health is actually declining rather than improving. So I think emotional first aid and the practice of it and the thinking about it is more important now than ever.

Well, that's fascinating. I definitely want to hear more about some of these challenges that you've mentioned around, you know, teens and loneliness. But when you think about this year and this time of year specifically, what makes emotional first aid more important now than ever when you're thinking about December? Well, you know, winter is coming in the Northern Hemisphere. My apologies to the people in the Southern Hemisphere. Winter is coming, and that is...

A difficult thing for a lot of people, the change in light, for example, causes seasonal affective disorder where people tend to get depressed in the fall and leading up in the anticipation of the winter. But we also have these holidays and we go home. And when we go home, there's emotional time travel.

because we all resort back to our teenage selves, the roles we used to have within our families. We really take a step back in time for the good and the bad. But it's often a very emotional time to go back to our homes to see our families or people who don't have their families around them who are perhaps by themselves or who are lonely or who are just with friends or

But it's also a time where everything around us is telling us that this is the best time of the year and the most wonderful and the happiest. And so that's a lot to live up to. We're expecting it to be a very emotional and rewarding time where it can actually be quite challenging and difficult for many, many people.

people. So there's this perfect storm of circumstances that makes this time of year a very emotional time. And most therapists like myself tend to be very busy in January because people are coming back from the holidays after all the dramas from home and the winter is now here and now the good part of the holidays are over. So now it's just looking forward to winter for a few months. It's a difficult time emotionally and it always has been. Yeah.

And of course, this year has sort of a unique challenge in that we just experienced this very big presidential election in the United States. And the impact of that, of course, reverberates forever.

It's far beyond just the U.S. And I imagine some people might be feeling heightened emotional fragility stemming from the results of the election. And so how different have you been approaching emotional health and thinking about the conversations that you've been having with folks? Do you feel that emotional first aid, your approach there is different this year than it has been in the past? Dr.

It's not necessarily different, but there's more emphasis on certain things. Emotional first aid in general, the premise here is that you have to be proactive in managing your feelings and your emotional health and the stressors that come at you in life. Now, the news used to be a source of information.

The news is now a source of stress for many, many people. And it used to be something we would watch at a certain time in the evening, and now it's something we're exposed to throughout the day on social media. And so we are exposed to this big stressor that's coming at us, unfiltered, all through the day.

And that is something that's triggering a lot of people and that's very difficult for a lot of people. Half the people are happy about the election, half the people are very unhappy about the election, half the people are happy and unhappy about situations in their home countries. And the news has been this stressor now. And I think it's important to think of news as source of stress and information, but more stress.

And if you think about it that way, then you would also manage it a specific way because then you need to control when you expose yourself to it and how much you expose yourself to it. Pay attention to how you feel after you're reading little snippets of news or little updates on social media. Are you feeling activated? Are you feeling angry? Are you feeling overwhelmed? If you're feeling any kind of distress in that way, take it seriously and be very careful.

deliberate and intentional about when am I going to expose myself to these stressors and for how long and when am I going to not do that so I can go on with my life and be present in the other things that are going on in my life so that I'm not overwhelmed by whatever's happening in the world or around me. Hmm.

You started to get into a little bit of this just now and talking about how we might be consuming the news or responding to the news. And I'd love to get a little more granular, even just beyond that, and thinking about sort of the red flags that we can look out for in ourselves to know that we're experiencing challenges and might be in need of emotional first aid. What should we be looking out for?

So look, in general, in psychology, what you want to look for are changes. Changes in your behavior, changes in your mental state. For example, are you very preoccupied? Are you ruminating? Are you having trouble switching off at night? Is your mind churning? That's a mental problem there in what's going on in terms of the thinking. Cognitive changes. Are you more distracted? Are you less focused? Are you making mistakes at work or in other places? That's a sign also of

cognitive stress. And of course, emotional changes. Is your mood shifting? Are your habits shifting? You used to be someone who always had to, you know, make the bed and do the dishes, and now they're piling up around you. It's not coincidence. It means that you're dealing with stressors internally from emotions or externally from other sources that you're not managing as well. And then you see changes in your functioning, in your mental functioning, in your cognitive and your emotional functioning. So that's, it's change that you want to pay

attention to. And if there is change going on, then you really want to ask yourself, what's happening? Is it something just temporary or has this been going on for a while? Is it now just one day I didn't make the bed or it's been a whole week and I don't even have the strength to do it right now? It means that, again, stresses are coming at you that you're not managing as well and therefore you want to take action to reduce those stresses so that you don't become overwhelmed by them. Yeah.

And so then to that point of the action, I imagine it's different for every person in every circumstance, but are there sort of three strategies, four strategies, a handful of strategies you can offer to all of us as a starter kit for emotional first aid?

Yes, and I'll go with kind of like big things because, again, we can get very granular in specific situations. But in general, one of the most important things to know about emotional health and emotional first aid is that it's actually effortful. It doesn't just happen. If you break a bone, you can set it and the bone will heal. Our emotions work differently. So we actually have to disengage the autopilot and pay attention.

to how we're feeling, how we're functioning, how we're thinking, how we're behaving. Are we doing so differently? Less productively, less efficiently? That's the one thing. So start and pay attention and then be ready to take action and to invest effort into protecting your emotional health. The second thing I want you to really think about is that when it comes to our emotional health, we do a lot of the damage to ourselves.

We have as humans an unfortunate type of response to certain situations in which we go and we make things worse. We get rejected and then we become extremely self-critical. We fail at something small and we generalize it

to think that we can't do anything. I can't succeed at anything. We tend to be very self-critical and our internal dialogue tends to be very negative. That is quite damaging. You took a situation that was hurtful and now you're making it worse for

for yourself. The same thing happens around anxiety. If we're anxious about something, our natural response is to avoid that thing. But avoiding it supersizes anxiety. It now registers in your brain as even more problematic because you just avoided it

Something terrible would have happened if you'd have gotten onto the elevator. You didn't. Thank goodness you're saved. Now, the next time the elevator comes, you'll be even more anxious. Or you got rejected on your dating app and you're like, I'm not going to date for six months. Well, why? If you're on the dating app, it's because you want to connect. Why are you doing that?

Our natural inclination is often to make things worse for ourselves, so we have to make sure we don't do that. And the third thing is we have to be proactive. Healing emotionally and emotional first aid is applying tools and techniques. They're actually things you have to do, thought exercises, writing exercises, different kinds of things.

And so these are active things. And so be aware that you can enhance and boost your emotional health. It will take know-how, effort, and real intent to do it. Mm-hmm.

I love that being really sort of thoughtful about this is key here. And to the point of being thoughtful, I know December is also a time where a lot of us are thinking about the things that we experienced this year, the accomplishments we had, maybe some of the failures that we also had. And so I imagine there's a fair amount of stress that can come along with reflecting back on the year that's passed. How can we take stock of this past year in a healthy way?

Look, when you reflect, it's going to be bittersweet because unless you are very, very fortunate and you just had wins throughout the year, it was all great and roses, which is truly highly unusual, so I doubt it. Good stuff happened. Bad stuff happened. You had successes. You had failures. You had those things that moved you forward in life or that enhanced you in certain ways, and you had the things that set you back. So if you're really reflecting, and I do believe it's useful to truly reflect because there's a lot we can learn,

then you're covering both the good and the bad. Now, the good can teach you what worked.

oh, this was a difficult thing, but I got through it. Great. How? What were the tools you used? Did you encourage yourself internally? Did you seek social support? What was the scaffolding you put around yourself to keep yourself structured and on task that you were able to succeed? How did you get your motivation up? Thinking about what worked for me, what efforts did I put in? What intentionality did I have that actually moved me forward?

But of course, we learn more from failure than we do from success. And why that's important is because we get very demoralized by failures. We get very demoralized when our goals weren't met, when we were set back, when we failed at certain things or when bad things happened to us. But it's actually really important to look at what our part there was, what we can learn from it was. Because we don't make a thousand mistakes.

mistakes in life. We make around four or five kinds of mistakes and then we repeat those in endless variety. So the kinds of mistakes you made, like if you have a time management problem and you just couldn't get, that's a key mistake. And if you can figure out how to avoid that, you'll figure out how to avoid many

So there's a lot you can learn from your failures about what didn't go right for you and what could you do differently next time. The basic premise there is what were the obstacles that prevented you from getting where you wanted to go and how can you get around them next time? It's a problem-solving task. And it's only useful if you do it without that self-critical thinking.

Because the self-critical voice is just distracting. All it does is make you feel bad. It didn't add information. How I get around the obstacle, that's useful. What the obstacle was is useful. The fact, you know, oh, I'm such an idiot that I had the obstacle doesn't add anything. It just demoralizes. So it's important to do that analysis, but in a very non-evaluative, non-judgmental, compassionate way. That's awesome.

Amazing advice. I think especially this idea of the challenges we face often falling into similar buckets. And so if you sort of think about what those buckets are, it feels like that's so useful for a lot of us as we're doing this work. And I wonder, too, do you feel that it's helpful to break this up? That can it be overwhelming to take it all and take stock of all of it at once?

Yes. I mean, by self-reflection, I don't mean that you sit and have one very long sit and all this. Like, this is something we tend to do around the time of the new year, around the time of the holidays. And we do it within ourselves. We do it with our friends. We reflect with our families. A lot of families have traditions, you know, mind us of what the resolutions are, what our hopes are.

for the coming year, what we want to look back on. And so when you're reflecting, another way to do it is not just look at the past year, but look at, okay, project yourself a year into the future. What would make you feel good?

And next year, if you could look back and say like, oh, I accomplished this. I tried this. I got myself to move forward in this way. You can target those things by even thinking forward into the future, you know, in those ways. But yes, this is something we do piecemeal. It can be overwhelming and you can break it down into categories. You can do work, social life, love life, family life.

other kinds of things, or you can just go month by month. Most of us have calendars that'll remind us, you know, like what went on or journals, but do it in some kind of systematic way because it's incredibly useful.

Well, now another area of focus for you is heartbreak. You wrote a book and gave a talk about fixing a broken heart. And the holiday season is really unique when it comes to heartbreak because, of course, we have this connection on connecting with loved ones, both romantically and family. And if you don't have strong connections in this way, or maybe if you've lost someone, this could probably be especially tough.

So what is your advice for managing heartbreak during the holidays?

So heartbreak is a form of grief, and I'm going to talk about grief more generally because you can lose someone romantically. You can lose them to illness. They might have died. They might have left your life for all kinds of different reasons, and so that's a very painful thing. When you suffer loss, you have the series of firsts. This is going to be your first holiday season without them, your first New Year's without them, and all of those things are going to very naturally remind you of, oh,

Last year, I was with this person. Last year, this person was still around. So it's going to be very painful, and it can be very painful. And depending on where you are in that grieving process, if it's very, very fresh, then obviously, you know, you're still tending to a very fresh wound. It's still about getting support, about crying. No one's expecting you to get up and be fully functional when these kinds of things happen. But...

When it comes to romantic heartbreak, for example, I want to set the goal. The goal of recovery from romantic heartbreak is very simple. It's giving them less and less stage time in your head.

Thinking about them less. That's the goal. Because when you're heartbroken, you think about them all the time. It's all you think about. The goal is to think about less, less, and less until you're barely thinking about them. And if you are, it's an ache. It's not a sharp pain. To that end, anything you do that makes you think about the person less, great. Anything you do that makes you think about the person more, not so useful.

So surfing social media to see what they're doing

is not very useful because that'll just be painful. If they broke up with you, then they've been thinking about it for a while until they did it, so they're way ahead of the process than you, and you'll be like, "It just happened two weeks ago. "How come they're out already?" Well, it happened two weeks ago for you, they've been thinking about it for two months, so they're ahead. So that can be very, very painful, or going through all the mementos and thinking about them. It's a natural tendency we have. It just doesn't help.

when it comes to heartbreak, 'cause it keeps the pain alive. And again, your goal is minimize their presence in your thoughts, in your mind, not expand it. So again, to that end, anything you do should be to minimize. And one last quick thing, recovering from grief of all kinds is not a passive process. I mean, it is for a lot of people because they're not aware that it should be active, but it's an active process because when somebody leaves your life, they leave voids behind.

And those voids need to be filled. And the voids can be concrete things like spaces on the wall where pictures used to hang or empty drawers, or they can be activities that you don't have anyone to do with now or social circles that you lost because they went with your ex or weekends used to be taken care of, but now you don't go visit your grandmother anymore because she's not with us.

So there's replacement, there's refilling of these voids. And that includes also a sense of identity, you know, go from being a we to being an I. So again, you have to literally change how you're thinking about yourself. It's a very active process and you can heal more quickly if you actually take steps and think about it as an active process rather than a passive one where you just wait for time to do its work. Hmm.

Well, we have a lot of member questions coming in and some sort of connected to some of the things you were just saying now, Guy, and I'd love to start bringing them in. So Suresh K asks about social media and you reference this as it relates to breakups and sort of being thoughtful about your engagement there. Suresh asks, how do you deal with the emotional impact of social media in a healthy way?

So social media is something we tend to go to. Well, some people live there, right? You're on social media all the time. The question is how you're using it. Are you using it passively or are you using it actively? Actively means you're engaging with people you know, you're commenting on things, you're posting things, you're getting responses from them.

Passively means you're in a bad mood, you're feeling low, down, lonely, rejected, whatever it is, and so you're just passively scrolling. And all you're going to see are the people that you're connected to in their best moments. That is not gonna make you feel better when you're feeling down. It's gonna make you feel worse.

And so social media is something, again, like the news, we need to curate our usage of and do it when it's good for us and avoid it when it's not. When you're feeling lonely, if you're not using social media to actually reach out and connect to people, you will feel lonelier and more rejected and more abandoned and more neglected personally.

by going on social media and seeing all your friends in their happiest moments. Now, they're not necessarily happy moments. Five minutes before or after, the person might have been in tears, but that's not what they're posting, right? So we have to be real about it. But again, pay attention to how it makes you feel. If it makes you feel good, great. If it makes you feel distressed, uncomfortable, stressed, sad, whatever, then realize that's not good for me at this time. I'll take a break from it.

And sort of connected to this, Cecily asks about setting a filter. And this isn't just for social media, but just sounds like in life. How do you set your filter to let things that are helpful in and keep out the toxic things, especially if your filter is distorted by poor treatment from people who you're close with, like your family, friends?

I wonder if, you know, if you find yourself in a moment where you think it's healthy for you to engage in social media with social media, how can you still do that and allow for things to come in that feel like they're not going to be toxic in your life?

So look, with social media, again, constantly have your finger on your pulse to see whether this is actually making you feel better or not. But again, if it's a problematic thing, you decide when it's okay for you to do it. Maybe I'll wait till I actually get to the event and I'll have some friends around me and then I'll take 10 minutes just to kind of catch up with things. But knowing that if I'm feeling bad, I can go out and be with my friends again, that will be a good distraction. But I also want to refer to what you said about

the toxic influences because family and friends and we go home and the holidays can be events where we're exposed to many people and some of them might not be the best influences on our life and not make us necessarily feel great. We tend to be very much on autopilot when it comes to the holidays. We just go passively and show up for the thing and do the same thing often every year or we just show up

Again, curate. If you know it's stressful for you to go home because your relationship with your parent is strained or there's a sibling there that's problematic or an uncle or an aunt or whatever the thing is, if you know that, be very thoughtful and be very deliberate in what would work for you. Maybe you don't go home for a week.

Every year, and I'm sure this is for most therapists, there are people who say to me, like, I'm going to go home for a week. And I have to say, like, I want to remind you that last year on day three, you wrote me an email saying, remind me next year that I shouldn't go home for that long. I'm reminding you.

And a lot of people will be like, "No, it'll be fine." And I'll be, "No, it won't," is the thing. It just won't. It's such a, this time of year we get so optimistic and so idealistic. But if you know that, then make it shorter but sweeter. Introduce breaks. If you're around people and it's just very, very intense, some families can be very intense,

Make a plan with some friends that you'll go out for walks with them, that you'll take a break, that like be proactive in figuring out how do I curate this season so it works better for me. And then how do I inform people? And then I'll let them know that I love to come, super excited. I'm going to have a couple of times where I'm going to have to be outside the house to meet people and it'll be fine. But you let people know ahead of time.

But do the thing that will work for you. Don't just passively go to it and hope for the best, even though every year is the same thing. Mm-hmm.

Thank you for all of that. And I think, you know, for a lot of us, you know, who, who work, there's a question around how employers can be part of this or how you, if you are a manager, how you can also help people through some of these challenges. And, and, and Anna and Paula both ask a question about companies and how they can be more empathetic to burnout and mental health struggles and what role they might play in, in these sorts of situations. So look, yeah,

We said the workplace is very stressful right now and people are feeling very stressed and burnt out. And when we're feeling stressed, we need a break from that stress.

And we can't get it if we're expected to be responding to emails while we're on holiday or checking in to meetings or doing all those things instead of getting a break. So if you're an employer, give your employees a true break. Don't, you know, give them a few days off. But without emails, without expectations, don't load them up. Schools do this, universities too. There's some universities that will be like, here's the break, when you come back,

All your finals are going to happen. Well, Merry Christmas. You know, good luck there. You know, it's not going to be a fun holiday when you have to study for finals or be present in the holiday and do poorly on them.

on them. So there's a lot we can do to give people the break they need. It's truly almost the only time of year where most people globally are working less, there's less going on. So use that to not force your employees or to not have to show up for work in ways which are stressful and prevent them from getting the break they need. And it's not just the emails, it's the fact that they have to check to see if they're getting them.

So tell them, don't even check in. Put an out-of-office message if you can, because then you can really, truly get a break. And if you're a manager, then give that gift to your employees. We know from the research they will come back more productive, more motivated, and more engaged if they get a real break than if they don't.

And this seems like this is great advice, not just in the workplace, but also just for people around you in other settings. You mentioned school settings, but also if you just have friends and family, other loved ones in your life who you see are struggling emotionally. Kim W. is curious about how we can support friends and family who are struggling with emotional health. So I'm going to tell you what you can do. But before that, I'm just going to tell you, when you study to be a psychologist, you

there is some point in which they put you in a room with someone and say, off you go. And you basically have no training at that point. So how are you to help someone without training when you start out? Well, the most important thing you can do when you start out without training is the thing that you can do without training, which is to listen and support.

And why that's important is it's actually incredibly valuable. When we feel heard and seen and understood and supported, it is extremely powerful.

It literally elevates our mood. It makes us feel a little stronger. It makes whatever the pain that we're going through feel less intense. It is very, very impactful. And any one of you can give that gift to another person just by listening and validating their feelings. You don't have to agree that you would feel the same way. You just have to validate that I get why you feel the way you do

in that situation. So listening to someone and saying to them, if you see someone in distress in the family, just say, let's go for a walk and chat. Now, they will open up or not. You can give them the space to do that. You know, if you say how are things and they don't want to talk about it, they won't. But by giving them the space and the opportunity, you're doing a lot. And then if they do open up,

Then you get to say to them, like, well, tell me more. And oh, my goodness, how did that feel? And just be there for them. And the fact that they'll see that you're interested, you're curious, you're asking questions, you want to know, you're compassionate, that is incredibly powerful and incredibly useful. And so listening seems like it's not a lot to some people. It's actually a ton, right?

And so don't underestimate the power of that and the gift that you can give by doing that with another person. And there are a lot of people who are reacting really positively to what you're saying. And I see Amy and Kim are both curious about the impact that doing this for others can have on your own emotional health.

Well, kindness, it's one of these things that has been studied so much. And kindness is truly a, what's the opposite of a double-edged sword? A two-sided bonbon. I don't know what. It's the thing that it gives and gives. In other words, by being kind to another person, it is very recharging for the person who does the kindness. Yes.

because you feel connected. You feel like you've done something useful and we are social animals. So we are programmed in theory to feel good about supporting the people in our tribes. And so when you do a kindness and it can be to a stranger,

you will feel better for it as will the other person and you will feel more connected to them for it. So it's truly the kind of thing we should be doing 365 days a year and all the time because it truly gives dividends. It's one of those investments that rewards everyone. It's a win-win. So yes, be kind because you will benefit from it as well. And it sounds like this also benefits

applies beyond just trying to give people emotional health or lending an ear. But Kat asks about service, actual, you know, performing acts of service and community service and how that might influence emotional health.

It's similar to kindness, but in a larger scale, because when you're doing acts of service, you're volunteering somewhere, you're working in a soup kitchen, you're donating food, you're helping people in need. That is the kind of thing that makes you feel, and them, that we are all connected. We used to be hunter-gatherers in small tribes, around 100, 150 people.

people at max. And so everyone knew everyone. So you couldn't get away with not being kind. You couldn't get away with staying in your tent, whatever, cave, you know, and not participating would be noticeable. And so we are actually wired to benefit from that and to feel good about doing that and to reinforce our social bonds in doing so. And feeling like you are of service to people, again, is an enriching feeling both ways.

And so it's a great way to do something that's actually good in the world and gain the benefits from it. And a lot of people, when they do acts of service, are in a situation where they're meeting other people who are doing those acts of service. So clearly you're meeting people who think like you, who are also into contributing and to being kind and to being proactive and vital parts of their communities. So it's a great way to meet people of like minds as well. So the benefits is just

Numerous. Hmm.

Well, I've been sprinkling in questions from the audience to some of these questions, and I want to ask a few that are a little bit, will pivot a little bit for us. So Lynn B. asks about balance. You know, she notes that ignorance may not always be bliss. How do we balance the need to deal with the things that cause us stress and the need to put those feelings away? So I guess separate from the idea of tackling those things when you feel ready, how can you find this balance when you have to just...

You just have to get on with things, even if things cause you stress. It's such an important question. And I'm so glad you asked it because it is actually about balance. It's about a one-two step. It's a dance of two steps. And the first step is the emotional step.

That is, being able to get in touch with the feelings you have, being able to express the feelings you have, being able to talk about the distress that you might be in, being able to share that with other people, hopefully get the validation from them, hopefully have someone who listens well and can do that for you. So the first step is the emotional step. The second step is the problem-solving step, the action step.

Because it should be, yes, this is terrible. I'm so sad about it. I'm so upset, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now what can I do? Should follow that. Because otherwise you're just left with a distress. And when two people start doing that with one another, they can get into something we call co-rumination where, oh, and it was bad for me too, and I'm upset about this. I know, and I'm upset about this. And you just end up spending too much time in the distress zone.

without moving to an action to be able to manage it a little bit better. So the second part, the action part is, so what can I do? And what can I do doesn't necessarily just mean an action. It can also mean, how can I think about this differently so that it's less distressing fundamentally? Because I'm seeing it from a different perspective. For example, I'm zooming out in time and seeing it as this is a very challenging opportunity.

holiday for me. But if I can get through it, I will come out of it much more resilient because I'll have to figure out how to get through it and what resources I can use in terms of support, in terms of planning, in terms of my own mental state. And so this is a difficult moment in time for me. I will get through it on the other side. Even changing that perspective can ease some of the distress. But that's an action item.

That's a, yes, I'm upset, I'm distressed and distressed. What can I do to help myself, to get help, to see it differently, to manage it more productively so it's less impactful or less destructive to me? That's the balance that when you go to the emotional piece, you also want to have an action piece that follows. So much of this sounds like it's

The way you are thinking about this, the way you're looking at the situation, your perspective here is really key. And we have a couple of questions related to the holidays and responding to what you've mentioned around decisions to go home or decisions to, you know, to spend time with family. Annette asks, how do you set that boundary with family when you decide not to go home and they might not understand your reasoning, which may also cause other anxiety and stress just from afar? Yeah.

So if you decide not to go home, and I'm just, I'm making this up, I'm not saying this is your situation, the person who asked the question, but let's say you decided not to go home because it turns out to be stressful and difficult and you will have a much better time staying behind and being with friends. Stay. Great. You set the boundary, you said, no, I'm not coming home. Now,

when you set the boundary, if the message is I'm not coming home, you don't necessarily have to say because you stress me out and you're too difficult and you have a mood and you have a temper. Not necessary. Once you said you're not coming home, you can say like, I'm not able to come home this year. I really want to

Also see my friends. I never get to have a holiday season with them. They're important. They're part of my daily life. And so I'm making that choice this year. I will miss you very much. I'm sure you'll miss me. Here's when I'll see you next.

but you can be very clear about what the boundary is. That's a boundary of not going in the first place. The other boundaries you might set are, hey, I'm coming home, but these are the things I would rather not talk about because those conversations don't tend to go well between us. So I'm asking you, please don't ask me about A, B, or C.

When you set a boundary like that, it's fine to do and you can explain it. But the magic is not in the setting of the boundary, it's in the maintaining of the boundary. Because your family, your friends, your loved ones will test the boundary. They're really serious, well, but just tell me this one thing about that thing you told me you want to talk about. So don't get upset when that happens. It's a very natural thing for people to want to test like, well, are you really serious? Where is that boundary?

You just maintain it and you say like, oh, I get the curiosity, but to remind you, that's not something I want to talk about. And then you redirect, you know, look at the birdie, distract, you know, like, oh, let's sing Christmas carols. You know, you do something to kind of move it along, but you might have to maintain the boundary numerous, numerous times. And don't get upset by doing that.

It's just, that's a natural thing. But just be very clear with your expectations that I will set it. That's not magic. I will then have to maintain it. And maybe numerous times. You can explain the why to people. Does not mean they will understand the explanation or accept it. But you can explain it once. But after that, if they don't accept it, you don't have to convince them. You just have to maintain the boundary. You don't have to change their mind, just their behavior. Hmm.

Boundaries are so key, it sounds like here and a challenge, I think, for a lot of us, especially when it comes to family. So that's really great advice. Well, we have another question here from Paolo, who references how a lot of the things you're talking about here is related to situations that may pass. But what about how you manage stress when you're talking about things that are more permanent, you know,

children who have moved to other countries or someone who's dealing with a lifelong restrictive condition. What are some strategies you can use to manage emotional well-being when it comes to tackling those kinds of situations?

Well, those kinds of situations, if somebody has a disability or let's say they were injured or their health declined in some way that impacted their functioning or children left home, empty nest, parents moved away and your best friend left, those kinds of things. They're very difficult at the beginning, but we do adapt to them. They're not chronic stressors. They are temporary stressors until we adjust properly.

to that situation. That's what grieving is about. I mentioned grieving earlier. When you lose someone, at some point you do adapt to life without them. It's just painful until you do. So we are very adaptive by nature. We tend to get used to situations and much more quickly

than we tend to anticipate. It doesn't mean we like it, but just the pain and the stress that it causes becomes more chronic than acute. It's less sharp and more dull. And so we do get used to those things. But if there have been these big changes in your life, this is what I was referring to earlier when I said when there are big losses in your life, and the losses can be not just from death or from heartbreak, but trauma.

children leaving home, which is a natural thing for them to do, or a best friend moving away, which can happen, then it's about there's a void there. And if you're feeling those losses in an ongoing way, it's because you haven't filled

that void yet and you need to work on doing that so that it doesn't feel that acute over time so that it becomes a little more chronic and a little less painful which it will become once you fill those voids once you recognize what is missing now that that person or that circumstance has changed and how you adapt to it

This is great. And we have so many great questions coming in from our members. Thank you guys for sending them in and keep them coming. We have a really good one from Lisa. Lisa asked for advice for empaths in intensely competitive environments. She talks about her own experience of finding techniques to sort of stop this anxious loop that she might experience when she's in these spaces that have been

These techniques have not always worked for her. And so she's wondering if you have any advice for how you can interrupt an anxiety loop when you're around peers whose energy might be negatively affecting you. So first of all, to disrupt any kind of thinking loop, whether it's an anxiety or an obsessive thought or something like that, one thing you want to do is these loops happen because they're fueled by the emotion that's underlying that anxiety.

So let's say I didn't quite understand what the issue is. The colleagues are intense, let's say. Colleagues tend to be intense. So you're sensitive to that because you're much more sensitive to those kinds of moods and they're like big and they're loud and they're brash. I'm making that part up, but just as an example.

So two things you can do. Number one, you want to reframe that in your head. Because if you're going into those situations with colleagues, so that's every day, thinking, oh my God, they're so loud, they're so intense, and I really hate that, and I need more quiet, and it's going to be so difficult, then you're actually setting yourself up to be more sensitized.

to them because you're anticipating, oh, this is going to be really difficult. So one thing you can do is you want to try and get emotional distance from that experience. And so you want to say to you, you want to reframe what they're doing. They're just being boisterous or they're just, they love being big. I don't love being big, but let them have their fun. Like try and get some distance so that it doesn't feel like it's coming at you.

as directly. And if it does come out, you kind of indulge it in the way that you would a boisterous child. I'm not saying you think of them as children, but like with a boisterous child, you'd be like, okay, very good, off you go. Like you try and get distance from it. You don't make them feel bad, but you make them feel like, oh, this is a little bit much for me. You try and find quieter spaces to be in. But that's one thing you do just so that you're coming in

ready and with your defenses up as opposed to your defenses down and kind of resigned for this to be very, very difficult. But the other thing is also to balance it out with distraction. So if you need to gain space from somebody who's in your office and being big and loud and whatever the thing is, then figure out how do I get space so that I can put on earphones, I can try and distract myself, I can seek out the quieter space

people, I can, you know, like you want to just, again, problem solve how I get some space from those difficult situations.

people. And there's usually ways to do that. And then if all else fails, you can say to people, hey guys, I'm having, you know, a little preoccupied today. So you do your thing. Don't mind me if I'm not participating as much. So it doesn't look like you're judging or that you're not part of the group because you don't want to do that either. But you can just let them know, hey, I need some quiet time today. So I'll be with my earphones over there and, you know, continue without me as it were. But ask for what you need.

I feel like the big subtext for so much of what you're offering is this idea of boundaries, like setting these boundaries in the workplace too or wherever you are so that you know what you need and you communicate that to people around you. At the beginning of the book,

of our conversation, Guy, you mentioned that your talk, since you gave your first talk in 2015, you think things have actually gotten worse when it comes to the need for emotional first aid and the challenges that we're facing. And Kim K, Kim W, excuse me, asked a really interesting question about humanity. She wants to know, can you speak about why humanity is becoming more stressful and more insecure in general?

This may be an opportunity to expand on some of the reasoning why you think things are much worse than they were 10 years ago. I mentioned before that we have these natural tendencies when it comes to emotional health to do the wrong thing.

to, for example, get rejected and become self-critical, to fail at something and generalize it into our competence in a more general way. There's a lot that we do in the mismanagement of our own emotional health that takes a bad situation and makes it worse. And unfortunately, the most stress-inducing

we are under. The more impacted we are by stressful and distressing events, the more we do that. So it becomes a vicious cycle. In other words, when things are better, we're able to be our better selves and keep things at bay. When things are bad, that's when our defense and our coping mechanisms function less effectively. That's when we don't have the strength to set the boundaries. So we don't because we just can't deal with it. But then

We get impacted by the fact that we didn't set the boundary. So there's this vicious cycle that when the world in general, when the mental health of the world is in a difficult place, we tend to make it worse. Loneliness is a really good example. When you become lonely, two perceptual distortions occur in your head. Number one, the relationships that you do have seem less valuable than they actually are.

And the people who care about you seem to you to care less than they actually do. And that prevents you from reaching out, from trying to connect with these people, from being proactive because it's like, well, they don't care anywhere and what's the point? It's not even useful.

And so, again, it's one of those processes that gets deepened and deepened and deepened. And then when people aren't reaching out to you, you don't reach out to others. And so the disconnect grows. And then you avoid the in-person meetings because people aren't going to talk to you. So that's just going to be painful. So I'll just pass up and say no to the party, say no to the gathering, say no to the drinks after work because I don't want to get rejected again. But then you're missing out on the very people who could make you less

So in part, things are bad because we tend to reinforce the bad when we're in a bad place emotionally. It is a leap of faith and it takes courage. When you're feeling really down, when you're feeling really stressed or distressed or heartbroken or lonely, showing up and putting yourself in situations that can make you feel better is a leap of faith. It's very difficult to do and people are depressed, they don't wanna go out.

If they go out, they feel much better for it, but they don't have the motivation to do it. So they literally have to force themselves. When every fiber in their body is saying like, don't, it's not going to be good. Don't do it. Stay home. Just take a deep breath, take a leap of faith and say, no, this is

"This is good for me, I need to do this. "Isolating and withdrawing is not gonna help me. "I need to be out there more." So it's difficult to do, it's effortful. And people aren't aware that that effort is important, that they have to override the aspect of themselves that's saying, "No, don't go, it doesn't matter, they don't care anyway."

To override that is difficult. So that's why things are getting worse. And that's the interruption that we have to introduce to that process by being in touch with how we feel, by recognizing that it's completely normal to feel how we feel, and that we then have to take a step that's going to feel wrong or difficult or not necessary to get beyond it.

This is so great. And I think as we think about what's to come, you know, just January is right around the corner and many of us will have New Year's resolutions. What is your New Year's resolution recommendation for people around emotional health? What is a good New Year's resolution connected to emotional health? Well, I am very glad you asked the question in that way because what is a good New

The mistake we make with resolutions is they become, the list becomes like a list, you know, a seven-year-old would write to Santa. You know, it's just like, we want to change everything. It's like gut renovation inside and out. And then nothing gets done because we can't fix everything. So when it comes to emotional health, choose one thing.

And by the way, if you achieve it in March, choose another then. You don't have to make resolutions just in January. You can keep improving. But it's much better to choose one thing. Now, if that thing wasn't something you're doing automatically, if that's a habit you want to try and get into, you want to get into a gratitude habit, mindful meditation habit,

habit, a kindness habit, whatever the thing is, you want to address the things that you need to address, choose one thing and make a very specific thought-out plan. One of the ingredients people miss all the time with resolutions is they don't quite decide when they'll start. The assumption is January 2nd, but January 1st is still after New Year's. But you're not saying that specifically, well, that's a Tuesday. No.

So I'll start on a Sunday, but you're not defining it. And then people don't have the definition of when they're starting, how they're doing it. So make a plan, figure out where you want to get to. That's the goal of this resolution. And then figure out what are the things that can stand in your way? What are the things that will prevent you from getting there? And then make a list of those and then problem solve each one. Well, if this happens, I can do this. Or to prevent this from happening, I can do that. In other words, it takes strategy.

It takes planning. It takes effort. Again, my message is you can do it, just it does require effort. It's not automatic. So put in the effort to strategize and to plan a good strategy for how you're going to get from here to there with that one resolution, when you're going to start, and then off you go according to the plan.

I love this. Put in that work on that New Year's resolution. It's not just your wish list, right? It's what's actually going to take to make those things happen. Well, I mean, I think along those lines, people are contemplating that. What is the one thing that you see from people as it relates to emotional health that you think you wish more people would do?

I mentioned this internal voice we have, right? The negative self-talk or the internal dialogue that we have with ourselves, that the running commentary we tend to have in our head about our lives. Unfortunately, the voices that we tend to use are voices from earlier in our lives, and we tend to internalize critical voices, difficult voices, challenging voices. This is an opportunity to

to actually reparent ourselves, to have an internal voice that we didn't get because no parents are perfect. It just doesn't exist. And so what internal voice could you have that would be understanding, compassionate, patient, but not indulging, not enabling,

hold you to your expectations, hold you to your goals. Don't just excuse things, but do it with support, with compassion. If you have this amazing best friend who is always saying the right thing to you, can that be you in your head? Because if you can do that, that is immensely, immensely powerful because you will be approaching yourself with respect, with expectation,

You will be looking at what your potential is and all the things you could be and thinking of yourselves in that way and pushing yourself to be those things and not being too hard on yourself when you're not, but saying, all right, if that didn't work, let's figure out why and what you can do differently. So there's accountability there, but with compassion and with kindness and with caring. If you can adopt an internal voice like that, that would be amazing. Mm-hmm.

Well, that's my resolution for sure is to become your own best friend. That's amazing. And such great advice. Well, I think you've offered us so many good tips. I can't wait to write down a lot of these. I would love to hear from you. If people are feeling like, okay, there's so much here. What do I what do I remember? What is the one thing we should take away from this conversation if we forget everything else?

that emotional health is possible and it's doable, but to do it, you need to be informed and you need to be willing to work.

So when people talk about self-improvement, doing the work, it means this. It means the effort. It means people go to the gym, you know, like five hours a week. If you spend half the time in the gym than you do about correcting things over here, you'll be really far ahead of the game. So,

Take it seriously. Realize that I can't change how I feel and how I think and what's going on in my life if I take myself seriously and do the things that are best for me, that are healthiest for me, that will move me forward.

Well, guys, we're nearing the end of this conversation. You have done so many incredible things with TED. As I mentioned at the top, you've given three talks on three very different subjects. I think a lot of people are probably curious about what's next for you. Well, what's next is I have a new book that will be coming out in a year or so. It's called Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. And it is a

you know, it is the manual for the human mind that you need to take with you to work. Because all the things I've spoken about in terms of being thoughtful and intentional and deliberate and thinking about things in a certain way and being proactive, this all applies to our work and to the impact work has on our lives. And so this is a book that will help people be emotionally healthier, more productive at work and do things in a way that will minimize their stress. We don't have to wait. It would be nice if

you know, the companies change, but we don't have to wait for the companies to change. There is much more we can do to reduce the grind by being a bit smarter in the mind.

Well, I'm excited for that. And I'm sure I speak for a lot of people on this call at this event and saying that it is something that we're on the lookout for. So I can't wait to read that. And thank you for sharing that with us, Guy. And thank you for sharing your time and all of this wisdom. This has been really inspiring, thought-provoking. I feel like there's a lot of things we could all take away from this. So thank you. Thank you for having me.

That was Guy Winch in conversation with Whitney Pennington Rogers at a TED membership event in 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines.

And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Fazi-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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