Immediate Stress Solutions for a Happier Future, with Andy Puddicombe

(Headspace Studio jingle plays) Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Wednesday morning. Now, I dunno about you, but when we feel stress in life, sometimes we don't really know what to do with it. Sometimes that's conscious, sometimes it's unconscious, sometimes we intentionally shut it away, shut it off, try to push it down and suppress it. Other times it just sort of happens. It's almost like we don't have the capacity to even think about how to process it or to be able to allow it to be processed. So it just sort of happens. It's pushed away. Now, we may think that's a good way to deal with stress. If we can just sort of push it away and keep it out of our mind, out of our life, then somehow we're gonna be happier as a result. Stress doesn't really work like that. My guess is that you will have experienced that in some way in your life. Maybe you've been able to keep it down for a certain period of time and then, I dunno, maybe you got ill in some way. Maybe you're able to suppress that frustration or something for a certain period of time and then you just suddenly broke down one day. Maybe it was tears at work. Maybe it was a meltdown in the queue at the supermarket with your children. There are so many different ways that we suddenly go from sort of at least appearing on the surface as very calm, sane individuals to completely losing it. And that's a big jump and it's not something that happens in that moment. It's something that has already been building up underneath. And that at some point has to come to the surface. And if it can't come to the surface in one way through our thoughts or our emotions or through, you know it will find another way. And I was really struck by this recently. I was listening to an elderly man and he'd been living for decades since he had lost his child. And it had understandably sort of almost defined his life in many ways and by all accounts, had been a very private man, had never really talked about it. It had occupied his mind clearly in such a strong way. And yet, you know, it came from a time and a place and a tradition where it just wasn't the thing for necessary, men, especially, I think, to talk about their struggles mentally in that way. And had gone for many, many years to say most of his lifetime without ever really discussing it. And it was only in sort of his later years that every now and again, sort of the name of his son would come to his lips, would come to the surface. Not necessarily any context to it, not in the the shape of any sort of story or conversation but it was almost like it...