A Shocking Wakeup Call and Getting Intimate with Stress

 

“A Shocking Wakeup Call and Getting Intimate with Stress”

a Girl Boner podcast transcript

Dr. Heiss: These diagnoses are going to keep coming. We’re going to have divorces. We’re going to have breakups. We’re going to have awful things that happen in our life. Those tigers are going to show up. Instead of trying to push them away, how do we invite them in for tea and… recognize that they’re there actually to help us realize what’s important to us? And then transfer all of that stress energy into something that is useful?

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August/narration:

Dr. Rebecca Heiss is a stress physiologist, keynote speaker, and author. Before a life-changing phone call some years back, her introduction would have been very different.

First, a little Girl Boner walk down memory lane. [curious music] Rebecca grew up in a household she described as liberal and sex-positive – but she also felt protected from the outside world, and a bit shy around the topic of S E X.

Dr. Heiss: I was such a sheltered kid. I literally looked up sex in the dictionary.

I was probably eight years old and I was just figuring out how to use a dictionary and I was like, oh, I could look things up. This is so exciting. Talk about the nerdiest of nerds.

I remember my mom when I was probably, maybe nine or 10-ish, my sister was three years older, so she kind of sat us down together and had this whole conversation about masturbation and sex. And I was just like, I cannot believe my mother is talking about these things to me.

It was so awkward despite her very best attempts, and it was me who was uncomfortable.

August/narration:

During her freshman year of high school, she had a pretty awesome sex ed teacher.

Dr. Heiss: She spent the first day of sex ed asking us all to say, she’s like, ‘Nobody will get in trouble. Just say every word you’ve ever heard associated with sex genitals. Like, let it rip.’ I was sitting back going, I know none of this. Like, what? This is a whole different language to me. It was so wonderful.

It was such an open door experience for me to go, oh, okay, now we’re all on the same page. How useful to have the tools and the language to, to be speaking to my peers. It was really, really freeing.

August/narration:

That same year, her sister came out as a lesbian.

Dr. Heiss: This is the nineties. So it’s been a minute. A lot has shifted in that timeframe. I remember being such a big deal. I come from a small town where I graduated with a hundred people. And so, “There’s a lesbian among us. Oh…”  Just this shocking ripple wave. And now it’s just wonderful to see like, yeah, okay. Not a thing that needs to be described or talked about in a shameful way.

August: Right, and knowing someone, being able to put a term that you might’ve had some ideas about with a person makes all the difference, doesn’t it?

Dr. Heiss: August, that was everything. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever told her just how much courage and bravery that must have taken, because all of the conversations turned to, you know, here’s what I thought about lesbians. Here’s what I thought about the LGBTQ+ community. But that’s not Nancy. We love Nancy. And suddenly this clicked of like, oh, these are humans. This is one small, itty bitty, tiny bit of their identity, not the whole human. That was a really formative thing for my childhood.

August/narration:

Growing into her own sexuality was an interesting experience for Rebecca. Rocky at first, but then full of discovery. I related to part of that, sort of in reverse.

Dr. Heiss: I always wanted to be more of an adult than I was, and I think it came from this space of always feeling like I was behind. So I tried to date much older men to begin with and it worked. And I’m not saying it was the healthiest of relationships. In fact, there were some very predatory, pretty awful relationships from my early days.

As I developed and figured out like, oh, this is not a mark of your worthiness. Your age, your maturity doesn’t have to be represented by who you’re dating or who you’re with.

I came into my own a little bit and discovered self-pleasure. Ooh, like, what is that? That’s amazing. I don’t actually need any of these partners because frankly, it was many, many years before I had an orgasm, from a partner. I’m like talking into my, late twenties probably.

I mean, that’s, wild, right? This is what I believed women were supposed to be in sex. And, and once I kind of woke up to like, wait a second, my pleasure is probably just as important. Why does sex end when that happens? And I dated a woman and that was a big shift as well. That was pretty wonderful.

August: That’s amazing. It’s such an incredible thing to, to discover something like that about yourself and your body when you have more emotional maturity. For me, self-pleasure came very late. I actually had the opposite. I orgasmed with partners and never by myself.

Dr. Heiss: That’s so interesting.

August: Yeah, it was really interesting. But once I did, and I was about 30, the first time I masturbated to orgasm myself, and it was like another puberty, but only the fun parts where you’re kind of curious about everything. Did you have that feeling?

Dr. Heiss: Yeah. That’s a great. It’s so funny. I’ve never heard it described that way. I’ve never really thought about this so much. So thank you for putting me into my own discomfort, which is something I challenge people to do. This is great.

Yeah, it was a whole new world. It really was. Oh! Oh, what else is possible here?  Wait, this is what other people are experiencing? Oh, well, let’s try this. Let’s try that. Let’s, yeah. It was an awakening is the right, is the right term, I think.

August/narration:

At a certain point, about 10 years ago, she got married.

Dr. Heiss: There was a piece of me that still needed marriage. That label was so important and I didn’t get married until I was older.And I needed that security to say, okay, now I can really be myself. He’s a lovely human being, but we were not compatible.

August/narration:

An experience involving her sister’s partner, Kim, helped her really see that — after a pretty long history.

Dr. Heiss: My sister met her partner in high school and fell madly in love and they liked to joke they were married three times. They were married in Vermont when civil unions were first became legal and then they were married in Canada. And then finally, when they had the right to marry here, they were married a third time.

Kim was just this spark plug of life and love and joy and openness and curiosity, and really brought into my world a level of self-awareness that I, sometimes didn’t even like. She was the challenger. She’s like, “Well, why would you do it that way?” And I’m like, “Uh, gosh, I don’t know…”

She was just delightful and, and contagiously funny and just a wonderful person in my life and such a model for love and deep connection in relationships.

I have to say my love life probably suffered a little because I was constantly looking for what they had. And that’s a gift. It’s truly a gift.

August/narration:

One day, as Nancy and Kim were enjoying their 20^th year of married life something alarming happened.

Dr. Heiss: My sister and Kim had been on a bike ride and got home from the bike ride and Kim lost her ability to speak.

It was just one of those moments that really terrifying. They chalked it up to heat stroke, but obviously took her into the ER, had this imaging done and then it was just this panicked evolution.

August/narration:

Rebecca was visiting her ill grandmother at the time. She was for a walk when she received an unforgettable phone call.

Dr. Heiss: It was this beautiful day in June. I mean, just like crystal clear blue skies and you know, when like you just get this feeling in your pit of your stomach. My phone rang and it was my sister and I just knew this was not for whatever reason that that connection, like it just was not good news.

She said, “Look, I don’t know how to say this. Kim’s been diagnosed with a brain tumor. They’re giving her a year.”

And it was just so, it was so surreal. Because it’s so outside of your control, Like, what do you do? What can you do?

Immediately, you know, human nature, I go into action. Like, who do I call? What can I do? How do I show up? I just remember calling my whole family that day.

Just out on this beautiful walk and the juxtaposition between how alive the air was. It gives me chills to think about because it everything was so beautiful and to carry that with this awful news, yeah, it stuck. It’s definitely a crystallized memory.

August/narration:

Another memory involving Kim is one Rebecca cherishes.

Dr. Heiss: I had this beautiful opportunity to talk with her the day before she died. She’d lost her ability to speak at that point, but really lived a very vibrant life even up to the, the last week. I remember we were trying to move her, so she wouldn’t develop bedsores this last week. And she almost fell off the bed. We kinda like, almost dropped her and she’s like, “I’m not going anywhere.” And it was just this huge moment of joy and she held that, joy for life right to the end. So she was a really special person.

August/narration: 

When this all happened, Rebecca was living a life that many would consider stable, secure –ideal, even.

Dr. Heiss: Generally in my life, I was in a safe place. I was married. I had a safe job that I could keep for the rest of my life and retire from and be fine. I owned my own home.

August/narration:

Kim’s illness led Rebecca to question her life decisions.

Dr. Heiss: I mean, I think as soon as I got off the last phone call with my family of just like that immediate silence of, Oh shoot. Now what? Like, what does this all mean? This sounds very selfish, but I’m gonna give myself a pass in saying it also is very human. I immediately thought about if this had been my diagnosis. What would I want and what would I wanna experience? What would I want to do? How would I want to be remembered?

And very quickly I was like, this is not the life I want. And within the next month, I quit my job, sold my house, and divorced my husband.

August/narration:

She also decided she would write a book.

Dr. Heiss: I was like, I have a book in me.

August: Had you been struggling emotionally before realizing all of that and making those decisions?

Dr. Heiss: I think languishing is the right word. There was nothing bad about my relationship. There was nothing bad about my job. It was settled, it was fine. It was meh. And I just don’t wanna live a meh life. I wanna be all in. If that means that I have to give up an okay situation and suffer for a while to find something that’s better or worse. I mean, look, there’s no guarantees, right? There’s no guarantees. But to me, it’s worth the risk.

And when I tell you I had no plan, I mean, I sold my house and didn’t know where I was gonna sleep that night. I was not in the greatest state.

August/narration:

People around Rebecca noticed. She was fortunate to have some privilege and stability, of course. She had a house to sell, she wasn’t broke. But still…

August: No judgment. But were people worried about you? Were they like, “What is she doing?”

Dr. Heiss: I’m sure they were August. I’m sure they were. You know, I’m so lucky to have such a wonderful family. we also are at, I think, the typical family where it’s like, let’s talk behind her back, like, make sure she’s okay and everybody will just like, handle her with kid gloves for a while.

I’m sure there were a lot of conversations happening around that. They didn’t really loop me in very often, but it was just a, “Hey, doing all right kid? Like, everything good?”

So yeah, I think there’s a lot of concern there. but they also know me. This is kind of my mo. I’m an all-in kind of person. I really believe there’s a beautiful big world out there, and why wouldn’t you try and experience it all?

August: Yeah. And then you had almost like a push of a gift from your sister-in-law in a way. I don’t want to say that her diagnosis was a gift, but something about her handling it with grace and humor and passion and joy, living as much as she could live while she’s was here, I’m sure was inspiring.

Dr. Heiss: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s funny, even as you say that. I think about this research around post-traumatic growth and how often people who go through traumas. It’s not that I would ever wish for that to happen, right? If I could, I would undo that and she’d be here today. But given the circumstances, have I grown? Do I appreciate the growth that I have as a result? And the answer is absolutely. It goes hand in hand: the sadness and the happiness and the bittersweet. They’re all together in that.

August/narration: 

So, Rebecca found herself sort of flailing about, but also not. She’d taken a leap without a certain net.

Dr. Heiss: I rented an Airbnb in the middle of nowhere. I have no plan, I have no plans, in the middle of nowhere Virginia. I’m in this house for a couple weeks, and then I’m like, oh my gosh, I can’t afford this. What am I gonna do? The woman who owned the Airbnb asked me to go to lunch and we had this delightful lunch.

She’s like, “You really need to meet my husband.” And I was like, “Okay.” So they had me to dinner and this is probably the last day of rent that I have. Her husband happened to be the a Harvard Medical Director for all of the medical faculty there. And we had this delightful discussion around politics and religion, diversity and inclusion and stress.

I was telling him my whole life story. And by the end of the evening, you know, we’d gone through a couple bottles of wine and he’s like, you know, we just bought this house down the road and we’re renovating it and if you just wanna live there. Why don’t you just stay? You can help us around the farm a little bit if you have time, but you’re writing a book.

I ended up staying months. And we had dinners, a couple times a week together.To me, this is one of these beautiful examples of how in moments of really deep stress and sorrow and difficulty and uncertainty, stress really helps us reach out to each other and not only help one another, but that helps ourselves too.

I will always, always, always be grateful for those people in my life.

August: You seem like somebody who’s ever evolving. So I don’t mean this in a way of like this stopped, but where did you land from it? Where did this sort of lead into your next chapter?

Dr. Heiss: Yeah, great question. I decided, that I was an author. I decided that I was a speaker.

August/narration:

Some of this had to do with her childhood dreams.

Dr. Heiss: So when I was eight, I loved the theater, I loved the stage. I wanted to be on Broadway. Like, I don’t have any talent. So that was a, that was a problem. I loved it.

I also love science. And so the more I started using the research that I had been involved in, in my own life, I was like, you know, this really has to come out of the lab and into people’s lives.

The timing of this is just wild. I had just given a TEDx because one of my students had nominated me to do a TEDx and somebody had pulled me aside afterwards and said, Hey, would you come speak to my company?

So I did and they handed me a check and I was like, no way! People get paid to do this? This is amazing. I would do this all day. So I put out a website, which I’m sure was terrible. I cringe at the idea of looking at my first website and just said, I’m a speaker and I’m an author.

Talk about taking a big leap. I emailed one person about my book. I wrote the entire book, the entire manuscript, and I emailed one person about it and the response I got was like the next day. And she said, “Listen, this is not how this works. I’m not even a publisher. I am a literary agent, but I like your stuff. And if you want to work together, I think I can sell your book.”

August/narration:

That is not usually how it works for authors – trust me, I know. So does Rebecca, now. And she did go through the rigamarole of rejection letters from publishers. Eventually, her book sold. And, her career, one she loves, blossomed.

I asked her how her big leap and the journey that followed impacted her sexuality, or even her relationship to pleasure or intimacy. She wasn’t quite sure; she had to think about it.

Dr. Heiss: I think at that moment I was really disconnected, from all of it. , I certainly wasn’t looking for partners. I don’t think sex was even a part of that chapter of my life.

It’s interesting to think back on that because I don’t know if that was a worthiness thing or if that was a, there’s too much else going on and I, I became other focused.

But it was not the front and center of my, of my world at that moment.

August: That’s also so fine and so normal. I think, in our culture we have these terrible words like dry spell or, you know what I mean? All these dry spell.

but it was very wet and lush in other ways. Like sometimes our sensuality and our sexuality are not front and center and maybe they’re integrated and maybe it’s not time to be exploring and that’s okay.

Dr. Heiss: What I will say is I had a lot of really intimate experiences that were incredibly sensual, in their own ways that were just deep emotional connections. as you asked me that question, I was like, sex? I wasn’t having sex at all.

But emotionally, I was so intimately connected to a couple really dear friends that I was getting some needs met there. That really is, for me, the biggest driver of sex in my life is like, I want that emotional connection. I want that deep intimacy. And so it wasn’t being met in a physical way, but it was definitely being met. Yeah.

August: That’s really beautiful. I love hearing that.

August/narration:

Rebecca went on to write another book which released last month. It’s called “Springboard: Transform Stress to Work for You.”

Dr. Heiss: It really about how we can, rather than avoid these stressors, we can invite them in. I call it inviting the tiger in for tea. Our stress response is built for three minutes of screaming terror through the savanna, right? Like getting chased by a tiger, lion, and bear. And so, we’re not getting rid of stress.

These diagnoses are gonna keep coming. We’re going to have divorces, we’re going to have breakups. We’re going to have awful things that happen in our life. Those tigers are going to show up. Shoot. I mean, the inbox is going to overflow. That’s a tiger.

So how do we, instead of trying to push them away, how do we invite them in for tea and get curious with them? Name them, get to know them, understand them, recognize that they’re there actually to help us realize what’s important to us. and then transfer all of that stress energy into something that is useful so we can fire it in a direction that helps us or helps somebody else rather than sit there and stew in it.

Inviting the tiger in for tea is such an important concept to me because too often, I think we try and numb out or avoid the tiger. Maybe it’s through sex or through drinking or through phone scrolling or your next dating app or whatever it is.

But if we’re willing to sit with it and to really get intimate with our stress itself, it really transforms the whole stress journey so that you’re not you are not scared of it. I call it my fear less stress formula. You’re not fearless. That’s dumb…doing anything without fear is challenging. But if you can fear it just a little bit less, it really transforms the whole experience.

August/narration:

Rebecca shared a few bits of wisdom she’d like you to walk away with.

Dr. Heiss: I’ll give you three really quickly. One, it’s not a tiger, right? It’s not an actual life and death situation that is going to kill you in the next three minutes. So if it’s not a tiger, we can then transfer the energy and the energy that you get to transfer means you can act as if you’re going to have an adventure.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be happy or good, or, i’m super excited for it. But rather than trying to calm down, we can use all of the energy that stress is really providing to us to perform as if there’s an adventure to be had.

And then the last thing I’ll say is that stress — and this is research that’s been documented again and again and again — stress correlates to a meaningful, purposeful life.

The highest correlate to a meaningful, purposeful life is past stressful events, current states of stress, and even future worry and anxiety. And if you’re sitting there going, I don’t believe it, ’cause that’s where I was even as I’m doing this research. Right?

August/narration:

As an exercise, she said, try this:

Dr. Heiss: Think of a project or an accomplishment that you are most proud of. Then go back in time to when you were in the middle of that project, what was your stress level? On a scale of zero to 10, how stressed were you?

Data said that 77% of people were stressed out at their gords. They were really, really stressed out. Twenty-three percent were kind of in the middle. So most people were really, really stressed out. And it’s just a reminder to you that stress is a barometer for how much you care. It’s saying this is meaningful. This is important. Pay attention now.

August/narration:

Such stress might lead you to seek help or support you need or to launch into major life changes, like it did for Dr. Rebecca Heiss.

Learn much more in “Springboard,” which is available most anywhere books are sold.

Dr. Heiss: It has a lot of my personal stories. Really deeply personal things that, are important to me in it. My hope, truly, is that people have a transformation in their relationship with stress. Because I promise you, you won’t be less stressed by this book. I can’t promise you that. And anybody that promises you that they’re going to eliminate stress from your life don’t believe ’em, like, it’s not, it’s not possible. But my hope is is that you’ll be able to stop punishing yourself for all of these things that are outside of your control and begin to use that stress in a new way that feels healthier and happier and more productive for you.

August/narration:

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