Why EQ and resilience are drained

As a therapist, people often ask me how can I become happy? But most people don't even understand the science of their own happiness. There's only one you. There will only ever be one you. So it's important to take the time to understand what truly brings you joy. Hi, Dr. Judith. Oh my gosh, it's so good to see you in person. I'm so fortunate that Heather, my producer, agreed to come on camera to help me to demonstrate some of the tools to help you reclaim your joy. She is someone who has all of the typical traits of someone who's high functioning. Heather is a busy professional, she's a working mom and she's a caregiver. Welcome Heather, thanks for being vulnerable today. Thanks so much for having me. I was reading your book and I saw myself in so many places that it made sense for me to have a chance to talk it through with you. And one of the things that I was interested in early in the book was the biopsychosocial model. Did I get that right? You did. I'd love for you to help me go through that activity because I wasn't sure that I fully understand how to map my own unique characteristics. You wanna first start by drawing a Venn diagram. Excellent, and now the circle on the top left, I'd like for you to label that as biological. And then the one on the right, psychological. And then the final one is social. So biological factors are things like your medical history. I'll use myself as an example. Medically, I have a low thyroid. So if my thyroid hormone is off kilter, I'm not going to feel the greatest and it impacts my mood. Psychological factors include things like past traumas traumas or painful experiences. Personally, I came to this country when I was very young. We didn't have much. So something called scarcity trauma or lacking resources drives me psychologically. And I have to be aware of that. That was a thing for us as well. Just not always sure if you were going to have enough for everybody. So I would put that in the psychological category. Definitely. It's an early childhood experience that shapes your decisions. And you may be aware of it because the brain has the conscious, but it also has the unconscious. So even though you have money in the bank, you may be overworking because you haven't processed those deep fears that you'll run out any day. So like for me, sleep and hormone imbalance and things like that, that would be like biological, right? Correct, yeah. A lot of women in middle life aren't even aware of the hormonal fluctuations. That it's a part of life, it's natural, but it does impact you in terms of your mood and sleep and the way that you think. Social, you were talking about like outside, like stresses that come in from relationships and things like that. Yeah, think about your day-to-day environment. What's your work life like? Do you have supports in the workplace or do you have people who make it very difficult for you? Biggest impact for me would be like work stress, just a lot of very high profile projects and things like that. So psychologically, I want you to see how it all connects to the major stressor. In the past, you've had fears about running out of resources, and can you see how that plays a role into how much you may work or overwork, perhaps unnecessarily, and the pressure that that puts on the social aspects of you spending so much time at work? And also, maybe that's playing a role in the inability to get good sleep, because you're not making space for enough time sleeping, but also it's impacting the quality of your sleep. Biologically, your body, because of the mind-body connection, may not be getting the full restorative sleep. Once you understand where you're losing your points of joy based on your biopsychosocial model that you will create during this course, you'll be able to apply the five Vs to reclaiming your joy based on the science of your happiness.