Hey deserving listeners today's episode is a presentation of an interview that I had with an author of a book called Stressed in the US.

The author's name is Meg Van Dusen and we are going to talk about the tips that she has about how to reduce stress in very practical ways for people who live in the United States and maybe other societies as well.

This is the Psychology and Seattle Podcast. I'm your... in the United States and maybe other societies as well.

This is the Psychology and Seattle podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Kirk Honda.

I'm a therapist and a professor.

Let's get to that interview right now.

So, Meg, please introduce yourself to the podcast, please.

Yeah, my name is Meg Van Dusen.

I'm a clinical psychologist here in Seattle.

And I just wrote a book called Stressed in the U.S.

12 tools to tackle anxiety, loneliness, tech addiction, and more.

And I have been in private practice for close to 25 years now and I wrote the book because what I started noticing in my practice about a little more than a decade ago is that stress seemed to be not only increasing

among my patients, but the focus of it seemed to be changing.

And then within the last four years,

the increase in stress among people,

not just with my patients, but with people in general, you know, that I know,

seemed to dramatically increase.

And so I really started diving into the research and really started looking at what seemed to me to be some really powerful statistics that there seem to be an increase in stress among

Americans and an increase in loneliness among Americans, as well as increases in anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

I started looking at what was happening with our

connections with each other and I really began to think hard about the idea that our connections with each other were actually suffering

...