The Self-Driven Child
Helping parents raise kids with healthy motivation and resilience in facing life's challenges. Oh, and having more fun while doing it!
The Self-Driven Child
Stress Relief vs. Stress Release: What We All Need In Anxious Times
Hey folks, Ned here. If you’ve ever felt like life’s got you underwater—like you’re just barely catching your breath before the next wave crashes in—this one’s for you. In this episode, I sit down with my dear friend, partner, and co-author Dr. William Stixrud to talk about something that’s more relevant now than ever: how we actually relieve stress—not just dodge it.
We unpack the critical difference between stress relief (those momentary escapes) and stress release (the tools that really let the pressure out), and why both are necessary. We also dive into practices that help us become non-anxious presences for our kids, and how that calm can be just as contagious as stress. Whether it’s exercise, meditation, social connection, or just laughing with friends, we explore the science-backed ways to bring your nervous system back online and show up for your family with clarity and calm.
Episode Highlights:
[0:00] - Introduction and announcement of the new workbook, The Seven Principles for Raising a Self-Driven Child
[1:39] - That overwhelmed feeling—why so many of us are barely staying afloat
[3:12] - Stress relief vs. stress release: what’s the difference and why it matters
[5:39] - Coping methods kids use—and why many of them are just avoidance strategies
[7:32] - The trouble with short-term fixes like weed and excessive screen time
[8:31] - Real stress release through exercise, baking, and yes—carrot cake
[10:15] - How parents’ stress regulation directly impacts their children
[11:38] - Two paths to calm: cognitive reframing and physiological practices
[14:42] - Radical acceptance—how shifting our mindset reduces suffering
[16:31] - The vital role of calm people and community in weathering storms
[20:08] - Emergency stress relief: laughter, singing, deep breathing, and movement
[22:50] - The power of consistent practices like meditation and gratitude
[25:57] - Final thoughts: combining cognitive, physiological, and social strategies for real resilience
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If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com
Hey, folks, Ned here, like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know, to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you like to, in part because we tend to revert to old ways. We hear a great suggestion or learn a new approach, but to easily fall back into the same darn things that didn't work before, it isn't easy, which is why I'm really excited to share with you that Bill and I have a new book out this spring, the seven principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook. Our goal is to make it easier to put into practice more of the advice from our first two books, the self driven child and what do you say? Full of reflections and exercises to do yourself with your partner and with your children, we want to help make the self driven child way your way, so you can, more often than not, be as effective as you want to be with your kids in ways that we know you want to be if you get a chance order a copy bill, and I and your kids would be grateful
Dr. William R. Stixrud:we know that most suffering is not based on what's happening. It's rooted in how we respond to it, what kind of judgment we make about it, that if we tell ourselves this is awful, this shouldn't be happening, it's terrible. That is very stressful, and in many ways, it's easier and more effective if we develop a practice of reframing it. I can deal with reality. This is happening now. This is not what I want, but I can handle this. And I think that the radical acceptance we talk about at least two of our books is really it's a good mental practice.
Ned Johnson:Do you feel like this time of you is burying you like you are up to your chin and keep having waves break over your head. Then just as you catch your breath, another one comes crashing again, exhausted, breathless, not to mention waterlogged. You're wondering, how can I keep this up? Will I ever get to the shore that I hope is somewhere out there. You're not alone, though it can feel that way. Lots of us know, hear about talk about self care. In this conversation with my partner and scribe and friend Bill strict shirt, we're going to expand that concept to talk more about what it really means to equilibrate, to even out, to catch our breath, so our nervous systems come back online and we can handle hard stuff, be the better version of parents that we need to be for the people we care about. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hi, Bill. You're my friend. I'm thinking about the introduction to our newest book, The Seven Principles for raising a self driven child, where you had a client who kept coming to all of our talks when we first initiated the all these early talks around the self driven child, and you kind of made your way up to her and said, Hey, so good to see you. But I'm kind of curious, why do you why do you keep coming back? It's kind of the same talk, right? It's the same jokes. And she explained that that to her, we were such a source of solace, the words we say, because it made sense to her. But then real life would get her spun up. Her kid would do something dope or Daffy. And she kept coming back to try to get her head, you know, settled that we were like her calm button, and so I'm grateful to have this conversation with you, because you were one of my calm buttons. I'm sure I'm not alone in that, but I wanted to have this conversation because I was talking with a bunch of students this week, and it's a time of year when there's a lot piling up, and you they start to like, oh my goodness, and it feels like the wheels are falling off the bus. And if you're a parent watching kid like that, it's hard for you too, and it's just, it's just a lot. And so one of the questions I put to students is, how do you relieve stress in ways that are healthy? I mean, could have six shots of something, but that's not really a healthy way to go about then. And what do you do? And the answers were really all over the place. But one of the things that occurred to me, and I know you and I have talked a little bit about, is the difference between stress relief, meaning the inflows of stress, and stress release, that kind of increases the outflows of stress. And so I'd love to dig into that a little bit, differentiate those you talk about the value of each of them and then maybe offer up some suggestions to folks. May mean they people, ideally already have their own tools, but it seems to me, we can all benefit from having a few more tools and our stress relief toolbox, or at least know why they work and maybe pick them up more.
Dr. William R. Stixrud:You know, given that the finding from from the Surgeon General last year, that 49% of parents are so stressed they can barely function. I mean, this, this may be maybe relevant to some folks.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, sure. It's gotten better in the last year and a half. Maybe, maybe, no,
Dr. William R. Stixrud:it's an important topic. And I also, I asked kids, what do you do to prevent the. Buildup of stress. What do you do if you're feeling anxious or stressed? How do you handle it? And almost always, it's some means of avoiding it, right? With the kind of the stress relief, which is often kind of an avoidance,
Ned Johnson:yeah, put up the barrier, keep the waves from crossing over your head. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, yeah. That makes a ton of sense.
Dr. William R. Stixrud:And that's, that's a good short term. It's pretty adaptive. You know, you're overwhelmed because you distract yourself in something else. But it's also extremely beneficial to to basically, as you say, you want the outflows of stress to balance the inflow, so that you more and more stress. And as you say, doesn't lead to good thing.
Ned Johnson:Yeah. And one thing that occurs to me, you know, kind of really an ongoing conversation, you know, in our corner of the world, the whole country, probably the whole world, about about phone use and how, how we use phones, how kids use phones. And I do think it's worth putting a note opinion, the idea that for many people, people use their phones as stress relief, you know, if they're kind of feeling overwhelmed by school life, friends, social, whatever, it's going to be a pretty handy distraction. I mean, certainly there are other things that people could distract themselves. We're back to the six shots of alcohol right, which are less adaptive than as a phone. It is, just as you point out, a good short term method, but a long term one, not, what we really want to lean on to to manage our stress in ways that are healthy and sustainable. Yeah, so I asked, I'll ask your opinion on this. I have, I should say, really quickly, when we started this conversation for an article we haven't landed yet, but was asking kids about this is actually pre covid. Now that I think about this, and I asked this one girl. I said, What do you do? And she's, well, I just, I just watched, I just watched lots of my shows, right? I go on my phone, or go on a go on my TV computer, and I just watch a lot of shows. And I was feeling a little saucy that day, I think. And I said, Well, that makes a ton of sense. I said, But, but for that matter, you could just smoke a lot of weed, and that also kind of distract you from your problems. And she looked me in, dead in the eyes. Well, that's my parents do. And I said, Whoa, wait, really? And she says, yeah, yeah. They just, they just, they get high, and then they don't, you know, things don't bother them. But as you've shared with me, and it's more often with with adolescents, often the ADHD ones who are voiding the world that, um, if you could smoke weed on Sunday and it made you feel chill the whole week, that'd be great. But it tends to be that only makes you feel better, because you're not thinking about the stuff you got to face. And so we need to need other tools there. But I was talking Go ahead,
Dr. William R. Stixrud:because personally, young I know young people who smoke pot to to for relief from stress, because it makes me feel less anxious as long as they're high. Yeah, it makes them more anxious when they aren't high. Because the way that you develop the kind of confidence that you can handle hard stuff is by handling it. The way you grow up emotionally is by feeling your feelings and dealing
Ned Johnson:with them. Bracket would approve.
Dr. William R. Stixrud:Yeah, this, person I know is a very successful adult who's younger than I am, but very successful in probably mid 60s. As a teenager and young adult, he smoked a lot of pot when he's 25 he had trouble stopping, and so we did a treatment program. And I remember the treatment program, the counselor saying to parents and to family members that if you smoke pot in time, you're 15 to 25 you're probably 15 years old emotionally, because the way you grow up is the way you grew up emotionally, by feeling your feelings and dealing with them as a point.
Ned Johnson:It's a good point. So I'm going to jump into a little bit about stress release, things that we know can help. And this was I had a student I was talking to yesterday who's lovely kid, but is super anxious, and frankly, and the school that she attends, I've now started to think about it as an anxiety factory that you know your line of if you want to develop an anxiety disorder, all you have to do is be Too tired and too stressed for too long. And that's her, and pretty much everyone she goes to school with, yeah and but so anyway, we're dancing around the conversation, and I asked her, How does she How does she relieve stress? How does she relieve stress? And her eyes lit up. And she's an athlete, so that helps. She's, well, I'll go to the gym a lot. I'll go for Ron, I said. And she said, I'd love to bake. And I asked her about what she bakes, and she's, you know, carrot cake, and it's all cream cheese icing is super fun. And I said, Do you know part of the reason why people love carbohydrates, apart from like they're delicious? And she said, No. And I said, Well, carbohydrates create in tryptophan, which then leads to more serotonin, which is the neurotransmitter of happiness and contentment, right? And so you get that dopamine hit of just anticipating that stuffing that first piece of carrot kick into your mouth, and man is in probably the second, third and the fourth as well. And carbohydrates increase serotonin, a sense of contentment and happiness. So. Not, not the only thing to do, but, but it explains why people bake. Yeah, so students are, of course, young people, of course, are trying to find tools to lower their own stress, and some of the ways that they do this really are by watching what their parents do. Right? My student, who was watching her parents smoke a lot of weed, didn't have great modeling for stress regulation, but if you grew up in a family of people who are exercise a lot or spend a lot of time in nature or meditate, then you're you've got pretty good models of how people regulate their own stress and but one thing we also know is anything that parents can do that regulates their own stress, even if kids don't follow along, will help children, because being able to come home as a kid and go back to your point bill about even with just hard feelings, if you live if you have the opportunity to grow up in a household with parents who aren't overly emotional or over reactive, the calm in that household. Of those parents alone helps keep helps children become more equilibrated, to come back to baseline, right? And that, of course, is what good mental health looks like. You, you you get upset, you get bent out of shape, and then, ideally, you you come back into shape. So I'd love to talk a little bit about tools that parents can use to help themselves. What are some of the things that allows parents to be a non anxious presence, as we talk about, to be a to be a safe base, to really take seriously their own nervous systems, so that they can serve serve that role for their kids, particularly if life for their kids right now is kind
Dr. William R. Stixrud:of hard. The way I think about it is kind of two different angles. One is kind of cognitive, kind of reframing things, or how you talk to yourself, or how you what kind of perspective you see things through, and the other is practices. So you mentioned exercise, meditation, that kind of stuff. And as you know, I've meditated twice a day, and my wife has two for 50 plus years. And my children support meditation, and they recommend to other people, but they're more exercise people at this point in their life. But my son, who probably so he's probably when he's about 35 he at one point, he said, You know, when you when we were young, we thought you and your mom were into yoga and meditation stuff. We thought you're so weird. What I remember mainly is how calm our home was. Wow, yeah, and I think that so. So I think that I in a self driven child, there's a story about this family I knew where they had an autistic son, and when he was in high school, he and his parents practiced yoga nidra, which is this yoga based relaxation program that you can get a lot a lot of different apps. Have it now, is really pretty it's pretty cool. But they said they did it once a week, is it? And when we do it, we all have a completely different day. And the question for me was, why don't you do it every day? You know, I just think that meditation practice, whether it's a yoga practice or exercise, the developing practices that you can count on basically calming down your stress response, and as we talk about in all three of our books, strengthening the connections between the prefrontal cortex that can think logically, can put you into the present, engaged in things, and the amygdala, and the rest is the Brain Stress circuit so that you stay in your right mind. And so I think, as you describe yourself as certainly, probably one of the most disciplined sleepers that I know. You know these physiological practices that we do, and then the mental reframing. And certainly, arguably the most powerful that I just talked about this with a bunch of parents of autistic young adults is the idea of radical acceptance. Is the idea of for all we know, whatever is going on in our lives and our kids life, maybe it's what's supposed to be happening, because we've never seen a plan that suggests that this is wrong, right? We know. We know that that that most suffering is not based on what's happening. It's rooted in how we respond to it, what kind of judgment we make about it, that we tell ourselves this is awful, this shouldn't be happening. Is terrible. That is very stressful, but, and it is in many ways, it's easier and more effective if we can initially, if we develop a practice of reframing it. This is where I can deal with reality. This is happening now. This is not what I want, but I can handle this. And I think that the radical acceptance we talk about at least two of our books is really it's a good mental practice, yeah,
Ned Johnson:and I would think about that, because we talk so much about validation in what do you say? I can imagine the self talk of you know, this is really hard. This sucks. I don't like it. Of course, I don't like it. This is what I this is not the way I want it to be. And I can handle this, you know, through, you know,
Dr. William R. Stixrud:I remember sitting with parents very early in my practice, probably in 1987 something like that, and their son had polio, and was really, was it really? Had brace on his leg. We didn't really buy he was very resilient kid, until he until he hit eighth grade, and then he wanted to, he wanted to girls to like him go on. He couldn't play baseball anymore, and he's having a hard time. And the parents will tell telling me about him, the dad started to cry. He said, I just wanted to feel good about himself. And after he stopped crying, I said, I can clearly understand, and also I think we can more compelling than helping feel good about himself if we aren't worried sick, you know, and I realized that so much of our work as a parent, it's on ourselves. It's managing our own emotions and and whether it's a mental practice of scheduling worry time, if you worry a lot about your time, there's pretty good evidence that if you actually schedule it into your calendar from eight to 815 to worry about my so and so's school performance, or his relationship, whatever. Your brain doesn't feel compelled to read about it all day that you worry about it all day. You know there's practices like that, or whether it's working on practicing accepting before we and then then doing everything accepting and then doing everything again to help, or practices like meditation, whatever it is. But I think that developing things that we can count on, I think, really helps.
Ned Johnson:And one thing that I would also think is helpful to count on is is, is other people. You know, when I think about the path that I've walked with my family and, you know, cancer and brain tumor and all this kind of jazz. And one of the things that just endlessly struck me was the equanimity of these nurses, these doctors, these surgeons. And part of it, I think, is they had seen this a gazillion times, and how much of this was their experience. How much was their training? How much was this was their default, you know, emotional setting? I'll never know, but, you know, when I sit there and think about they just kind of ooze this energy of, here's what's going on. It makes sense that you're concerned. We think we have a plan for this. Here's what we think is going to happen. And you just, they just kind of work the problem. And it, it strikes me that, I mean, I remember the the first time, you know, going to the ER, with my with my kids when they're little, and, you know, it's like one of the worst days of your life. And for the people working there, it's like, it's Tuesday, right? And so when we first had infants, you know, everybody's had infants, you would reach out to your your mom, your your parents, your grandparents, or your cousin, your neighbors, whatever, and kind of ask someone who's walked this path before, what's going on here? What should I What should I be doing? And if they had gone through this and knew that most of the time it worked out pretty much okay. That helps a lot. One, because you're getting advice from someone who's not as worked up as you are, and two, just their confident expectation that this is going to work out okay tends to make it much easier for us, for our nervous systems to come back online. And you know, I was putting that idea through the Sonja lupins nuts model, right of novelty, unpredictability, threat and the low sense of control, and so to spend time, particularly right now, or if you got kids who are having a hard time and life is hard, or whatever, to be able to talk with people who are a decade older, you know, a generation older who have walked through stuff that is hard, their sense that, yeah, the and, you know, this is going to work out okay, tends to be awfully helpful. Because, as we've talked about, stress is contagious, but so is calm, and it seems more likely that that person is more likely to calm me down about the things I'm currently upset about than I am to get him or her upset about the things that I'm currently worried about.
Dr. William R. Stixrud:Well, it's a really good point, and I think it's related to what we were talking about on Friday, about the fact that the parents their kids are struggling. It really helps them be around parents who are kids are going through the same thing. You kind of normalizes it, and you get your ideas. I tried this, but it didn't work like that. And also just mentioned in this context that years ago, when I first started to read about stress in the brain. We've got around probably late 1998 something like that. There's a book that was written basically summarizing what was known about it wasn't really scientific, but we would summarize what we the science of what does, what stress does to the brain. And the major thing that the person recommended was the person was a minister that wrote the book. It was a record. Was more socializing. It was spending time, spending time with other people, and not not always just family and work, but but going out to. Entering and being, being with friends, which is a, really, a wonderful way also to demand stress.
Ned Johnson:It's such a good point. And I would, I would loop in one more thing there. Sonia Lupien talks about the four methods of emergency stress relief, if I recall this correctly, of laughing, singing, deep breathing and vigorous exercise. So you need to go join a chorus, or go join a rumba class, Zumba class, Roombas. The room is the little robot vacuum, probably a Zumba class, not a Roomba class. At least we're laughing here. Why? Why I understand vigorous exercise and how that affects, you know, helps our nervous system. Why does laughing physiologically lower stress? Do you know much about that?
Dr. William R. Stixrud:Yeah, I have. I try to remember it. Certainly it activates you activate the muscles that you use when you laugh. Somehow it stimulates emotional systems as well. And certainly, would you start laughing? The laughter tends to be infectious. Yeah, dude, when if you watch a movie by a funny movie by yourself, you laugh. Laugh less people, everybody's laughing. Yeah?
Ned Johnson:The girl I was mentioning, who's at the I'll call it the anxiety Academy, was talking about getting together with her friends and I, and I asked her, I said, Have you ever noticed how you get together with your friends and like you laugh until like you just laugh each other silly and like no one can even breathe. And she's like, Oh, yeah. And I said, that happens so much more with people your age than it does with people my age, because teenagers just feel all emotions in ways that are much more intense. And I said, so I can think I can credibly make a case that spending time with your friends, particularly if you can get together and for back of a better description, just screw around that, that that's sort of psychologically, almost medically, about as good as anything that you can come up with, you know, that experience of laughing socially with people who really care about who care about you?
Dr. William R. Stixrud:Yeah, that's completely true. But I think as somebody who we both sing, I mean, you sing at a cappella group and I sing in a rock and roll band and and certainly just the breathing, the breathing is required for singing elevate in the same way exercise does, but especially if you, if you sing or play with other people, you basically your brain waves start to align coherence with the people you're playing with, because that feeling of syn, synchrony and connection that elevates mood as well. Well.
Ned Johnson:You may have to, you may have to, you may have to wait until you hear my acapella group saying to figure out whether we're in synchrony or not, but, but I hear your I hear your point.
Dr. William R. Stixrud:No, I really Sonia Lupin, the neuroscientists who were we got, we learned about this nuts, this formula for what makes life stressful, the novelty, unpredictability, threat and a low sense of control. She has this program called de stress for success for adolescents, for high school students, and she had these, as you said, Did these four kind of Emergency Medicine kind of things for stress release. And I think that just knowing, just knowing these four things that kids can do for us as well is really powerful. And I think those things we can do, those things regularly or spontaneously. And what I keep coming back to is this idea of consistent practice. And you know, when we talk we talk about meditation in our books, and the subject and child we mentioned, you know, that we think that mindfulness has a lot of benefits. The kids that we know are instructed mindfulness, the ones who use mindfulness technique use them as emergency medicine. They use, they focus on their breathing. They use some kind of breathing technique when they're stressed. And you know, we you and I practice Transcendental Meditation, where you do it twice a day, ideally, where they feel like it or not, because just it calms down the stress response. It makes it normalize your stress response so that something really stressful happens, you react quickly and spontaneously and efficiently. And when the stress was over, your stress hormones normalized quickly, which was what you want, yeah, and also it changed these regular practices change the brain in a way that develops what we call high stress tolerance, or the ability to function well in stressful situations. It also cultures that ability to resilience, that to bounce back quickly, and I think also that regular practices can you know that practice of calming your mind down enables you to experience more kind of inner peace and more often more sensitive of connectedness with other people in the rest of the world. And when I lecture to
Ned Johnson:jump in really quick and say with sometimes feels like I really hope I can get more inner peace, because it doesn't seem like there's a lot of outer peace out there right now.
Dr. William R. Stixrud:Well, you know, as a wise person once said, The green forest requires green trees, which is why I keep my focus on that inner peace part. But certainly gratitude practices all kinds of evidence for how useful it is to three times a week. You know that it's more effective. Gratitude practices are more effective if you do them twice or three times a week than doing them every day you actually sit through and
Ned Johnson:that's important for busy people. Yeah, that's right, yes.
Dr. William R. Stixrud:Don't waste your time grateful for
Ned Johnson:just picture. I can like, be the Grouch from Sesame Street. I can be, I only have to be grateful three days a week, the other four days, I can be a grouch. That's right, anyway,
Dr. William R. Stixrud:yeah, but I think it just makes an enormous difference. And so there's, there's a mental component, and certainly there's probably no, no more efficient stress buster, and just immediate stress buster than vigorous exercise. Yeah, I think that things like meditation would probably help to kind of root out more deeper stresses and change the brain over time. But finding a combination of things, yeah, that allow you to move in that direction of being a non anxious presence just what, though, it's not only what our families needs, what the world needs, in my opinion,
Ned Johnson:such a good point. Well, let me try to sum this up for folks, the takeaways from me, from what I've heard, is the value of having methods for stress relief, both emergency ones and preventative ones, ones that we do in a planful way, that we make them part of our daily and weekly routine. So we know we can look forward to them for if you feel like you're again the waves are crashing over your head. You know there's an island that you're going to get to just just in front of you, just a few hours away, that benefits techniques that are both cognitive and physiological, the ability to reframe our thinking, to talk back against negative thoughts, to really shape our responses, our cognitive responses to what's going on to us in our world, and then, of course, physiological ones as well, whether it's exercise or perhaps too many cupcakes, I'm teasing, but They are really good to to meditation, both, both mindfulness, and certainly TM that Bill and I practice so much, and then spending time with people that you care about, because the social connection, I mean, in many ways, we all kind of are in this together that my stress affects other people, but but other people's calm also washes over Me. And so we can be helping ourselves and helping other people at the very same time. And gosh, it's always fun to spend time with people you like, right? It is Well, Bill, thank you for this conversation. Thank you my friend as always, and thank you everyone for listening. My friend, the one, the only, the Dr William, Marc streid, and I'm Ned Johnson. And this is the self chip and child podcast. Hey folks. Over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school age students who care deeply about their kids education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. It can help parents to work with a team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better scores and grades. That's why I founded prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation and academic tutoring. This podcast and my books with my friend Bill Stix reflect our company philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school age student and would like to talk about putting a plan together. Please get in touch with us. Visit our website, at prep matters.com, or while your kids may only text, you might want to actually talk with a person, if so, you can reach us at 301-951-0350,