Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forrest Hanson.

If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today.

And if you've listened to before, welcome back.

Many of our episodes focus on dealing with stressors of different kinds.

We've talked about how we can support ourselves during difficult times, stay calm under pressure,

manage intense moments in our interpersonal relationships, and relate to and even recover

from truly traumatic experiences.

We all know the experience we're referring to when we say something like, I'm stressed.

But the word stress has become very generalized, and understanding stress better can both

help us come to terms with stressful experiences and lead us toward the tools that can allow

us to become more resilient.

So today we're doing a deep dive into stress.

This includes what do we mean exactly when we say stress, the influence the modern world

has on how stressed we feel, the biological basis of stress, and the challenges presented

by long-term stress exposure.

Then we're going to close by talking about what we can do about all of this, including

some key recommendations.

So to help me do that, I'm joined today as usual by Dr. Rick Hanson, Rick is a clinical

psychologist, a best-selling author, and he's my dad.

So dad, how are you doing today?

I'm good for us, and I'm extremely glad that we're talking about this fantastic subject.

I think back to Robert Sapolsky's classic, whose summary is contained in its title,

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