Stress in the form of “pressure” to perform or complete a task is not a horrible thing. Our body and brain’s response can be to hone in on placing energy into the exact areas that need more power in these moments to follow through with what’s needed. There’s stress to get to the goal quicker than everyone else, say in sports for example. Records have been broken because of these short bursts of stress induced energy. This, however, is not a state our bodies can sustain long term without negative side effects.
With all that’s going on in our country, in our economy, in the world, and on social media, it feels like so many of us are under a great deal of stress. We know that chronic stress can be as unhealthy as smoking a quarter of a pack a day. For many of us, our work, our livelihood, is a particular cause of stress. Of course, a bit of stress is just fine, but what are stress management strategies that leaders use to become “Stress-Proof” at work? What are some great tweaks, hacks, and tips that help to reduce or even eliminate stress from work? As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Joy Berkheimer.
Joy Berkheimer is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, Sexologist, Dating Coach, Author and Speaker. A radical force for self-expression, Joy helps womxn cultivate self-love, and empowers them to fully embody their sexuality so that they may become their best authentic and liberated selves. An acclaimed speaker and the creator of the Glow Your Goddess ® Movement, Joy leads sensual yoga, intimacy, and sexuality workshops, talk therapy, brain-spotting, tantric chakra interventions, meditation, and one on one counseling to help women to cultivate self-love, form abundant connections with the right partners and embody their most genuine selves. A published author, Joy is the writer of the 5-star rated book “Why “Won’t He Call?” and recently released her second in the book series, “Why Hasn’t She Answered the Call?”. Using her Dear Joy advice series and The Glow Your Goddess Podcast, Joy has touched thousands of people with her practical, soul- affirming advice on pleasure, passion, and self-discovery.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
Don’t over entertain the unnecessary stress of trying to know what everyone could possibly be thinking about you. When people do share what they think about you, especially if they are not in agreement with your core values or life choices based on these personal values, recognize the actual impact others’ opinions have on your life — most people will have little to no impact on how far you will go in your life’s dreams. Their lack of agreeing with you will likely not result in your homelessness, fired from your job or work.
Nothing stays the same. Understanding the law of detachment and surrendering to the flow of your journey. It won’t look like anyone else’s, so stop trying to “keep up”. You’re right where you need to be, and you’ll continue to move in the direction of where you need to go.
The mental chatter of outside influence can get so chaotic that we forget to hear our inner guidance. Hone the skills you need to learn regarding how to keep coming back to center. This intuitive skill will serve you more than money, positions, people and things.
None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful because of the support they gave you to grow you from “there to here?” Can you share that story and why you are grateful for them?
When I was 19 years old, and in my freshman year of college, my mother passed away. My entire life, I had lived with my mother, primarily without my siblings who are a bit older than me and out of the house. I was in a bubble of sorts, which I later understood was a result of my mother’s own childhood and Black woman in the world trauma. She did all she could to protect me from almost every form of pain she had experienced. Though there were benefits to her high level of attention to me, like working alongside her and cultivating a work ethic that could not be matched by any of my peers; it also left me blind to the normal teen social interactions, disappointments, realizations of self and lessons about the world that came with making and surviving your own mistakes. When she was gone, I was forced to come out of my cave.
My sister had moved back home just a few years before my mother passed. In that time, I did what most of us do and found a motherly guidance from her as well, but much different than my mother. My sister knew the “rules” of home, but also had lived, finding herself in a way I had not yet ventured to. It was my sister who stepped up after my mother passed away and became my lighthouse. She ensured I never felt alone, unheard of destitute. She didn’t have much at the time, but when I was on my own, trying to figure out how I would continue my education that my mother had set out for me to complete, she always found a way to make her not much into enough for me to survive. Watching my sister navigate having children of her own, working and grieving her mother as well was the beacon I needed to go on.
I got through those university years and 20 years ago I walked across the stage of University of Delaware, being the first of my siblings to do so. That was the beginning of my success story; knowing with this unwavering support, I could do anything.
Since all those years ago, my sister has not changed her supportive position one bit. When I wanted to take a route in my career that no one in the family had taken, and go back for my Masters in Counseling, she was behind me all the way. Relationship changes, moving across the country, establishing new ideologies around work, love and spirituality, my sister did not have to agree with me in order to find the value in validating me glowing exactly who I was. Dira always made it ok to not fit in the box and if she was good, who cares what the rest of the world thought!
Why is this important? I am in an industry that has long standing traditions and expectations on how a psychotherapist is supposed to present to the world. For quite a while that was White, heterosexual, no tattoos, no locs, plain clothes and overall subdued. Beige. In comparison, I’m all confetti. I didn’t imagine the goddess that I glow today would fit into the therapist box. Dira was the mirror I needed to help remind me that if I tried any other way of being, I would only prolong the inevitable pinata burst that was to come. I could only ever be me. And so, I smashed the old therapist box and made a new one.
Dira often reminds me, and anyone else she can tell this story to, about how when I was about 5 or 6 I pleaded so hard for my mother to buy me these purple jelly sandals. The store was likely one of those dollar tree places where you get what you need for the discount you can afford. Well you get what you paid for and all that was there were two left sandals. She proclaims I could care less because I wanted what I wanted. I sauntered and danced around in these two left shoes, ignoring that weird left foot curve on my right foot. They sparkled, they were purple and as far as I was concerned, they fit their purpose and they fit me.
My practice has evolved to fit me, not the other way around. Making my practice fit me has also sent out the message to others who feel like they don’t have a specific fit, that they can mold their world to their desires. That it’s ok to be loud with how you love, work and play. My sister gave me the safe space to show up and is the reason I’ve now become that safe space for others, not just like me but other versions of their own goddess.
My rock, my protector, personal comedian, accountability person (well she attempts anyway) and the love of my life, if I’m being honest, is my sister.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?
For the past several years, I’ve been diligently doing my research on how to better assist the clients I work with who struggle with intimacy, sensuality, and authenticity. Through this process, I’ve written a researched based guide on helping women through sensual expansion, and cultivated a therapy model, F.A.R. Therapy® (Freedom, Acceptance & Relationships), that aligns with the needs of the community I work with. To add somatic tools to the work I do to help others connect with their sensuality, I’ve been offering Glowing Your Goddess Yoga, where I work with women through sensual yoga, meditation and sound baths. This experience is a part of one’s journey on Erotic Embodiment and honors our individual natures. What has motivated these new projects is my stepping fully into my work of Sexology, as I will be completing my PhD in Clinical Sexology in mere months.
The work I do surrounds the need to be transparent about our pleasure and advocating for our right to experience what we need, without shame. I know this journey has already helped others, and will continue to do so, because when we make the choices to explore new facets of life, to work towards what we want, others witness this. When we see someone who represents our values, our culture and our desires, we feel we too have permission to live abundantly; no longer shying away from asking for what really fulfills us.
The percentage of Black Therapists in the US is 4%. Only 2% of therapists have PhD’s. Even fewer of those PhD’s are sexologists. Simply showing up and normalizing talking about sex, sensuality, and different relationship dynamics, creates space for other adventurers at heart to feel validated and curious about their own explorations.
Let’s now talk about stress. How would you define stress?
Stress is the mental, emotional, or physical response to situations that feel dangerous or uncomfortable to us. This could be physical harm, financial harm, emotional or otherwise.
In the Western world, humans typically have their shelter, food, and survival needs met. So what has led to this chronic stress? Why are so many of us always stressed out?
What’s left us so stressed out here is the system we’ve created for us all to follow. In the Western World, we are so much more focused on schedules, timelines, and goals. In other parts of the world, the desire is to really experience the journey on the way to the goal of getting up and doing it again. What we all want to do again is see people we love, laugh, fill our bellies, see something new and live to play tomorrow. However, we’ve complicated it with deadlines, social comparison and with our definition of “success.”
We want to be the best at everything and achieve it all. There is something called the hedonistic treadmill. Basically, we get a high from reaching a goal, but once we get there, we must move to the next thing to get that high back. Cultures that value and practice more mindfulness are able to stretch out pleasure, peace and general awareness of things that in a western culture we take advantage of and miss the joy in the small things.
And also….
Relationships are what makes up who we are. Having them or even not having them is a part of our stress, as we can lack the right support. Other causes of stress include of course the pandemic — loss of life, loss of freedoms, loss of certainty, Financial obligations, and Chronic health issues caused by stress and trauma — inequality, racism, classism, sexism.
What are some of the physical manifestations of being under a lot of stress? How does the human body react to stress?
Each of these levels of stress have similar negative effects on our bodies and brains, but as the type of stress lingers longer, the effects on our bodies become more damaging to our health. Under stress, we produce more cortisol (the “stress hormone”), which hurts our ability to sleep well, causes water retention and even headaches. Other symptoms with unchecked stress include anxiety, depression, weight gain from emotional eating, irritability, mood swings, low energy, migraines (likely from the muscle tension), sweating, insomnia, panic attacks and emotional fatigue.
Is stress necessarily a bad thing? Can stress ever be good for us?
Stress in the form of “pressure” to perform or complete a task is not a horrible thing. Our body and brain’s response can be to hone in on placing energy into the exact areas that need more power in these moments to follow through with what’s needed. There’s stress to get to the goal quicker than everyone else, say in sports for example. Records have been broken because of these short bursts of stress induced energy. This, however, is not a state our bodies can sustain long term without negative side effects.
Is there a difference between being in a short-term stressful situation versus an ongoing stress? Are there long-term ramifications to living in a constant state of stress?
Stress is a normal human response to what appears to be danger to us. For example in avoiding an irresponsible driver on the road, we may experience an acute stress, which allows our body to turn off unnecessary functions at that time, focusing all our energy to be ready to engage our fight or flight abilities. Stress responses you might see here are dilated pupils, shallow breathing, and muscle tightness. This kind of stress isn’t great, but it’s short term, allowing your body to go back to its normal state of rest fairly quickly. This is acute stress.
Episodic Acute Stress occurs when acute stressors are more frequent, leaving your body in far less moments of actual relaxation. This can be attributed to your profession being one where you are often in crisis management.
Chronic stress happens when you are maybe in an abusive relationship, you work or live in an environment where you experience daily discrimination or mistreatment, and you feel powerless to change your circumstance.
Each of these levels of stress have similar negative effects on our bodies and brains, but as the type of stress lingers longer, the effects on our bodies become more damaging to our health.
The positive reason we stress is to respond quickly and effectively to unsafe situations. The longer stress is present and not properly managed, the less responsive you become. The weight of the stress then becomes a shutdown to your system. Even as a therapist, we can become so overwhelmed with the stress of helping, that we experience burn out. This is a state of no immediate return. Once your mental and physical state get here, your only option is to stop, rest and reset. Your system basically acts like a hot iPhone on the dashboard of your car; “We’re shutting down for an undetermined amount of time, but when you stop playing games and get us out of this heat, we’ll consider coming back on. Thank you and have a nice day.
Let’s now focus more on the stress of relationships. This feels intuitive, but it is helpful to spell it out in order to address it. Can you help articulate why relationships can be so stressful?
Relationships become stressful because of the expectations we place on them. The way we love has a story behind it, that was learned when we were young and through other relationships. We each have an attachment style and these styles are ways of us relating to others, some of our values indicate how we manage intimacy and how we see ourselves. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been in a romantic relationship or not. We all have attachment styles and they all have a theme. If my attachment style has the theme that others are lovable and I’m not, that my partners are always looking to abandon me and makes me “clingy”, where my partner’s attachment style has the narrative that freedom is the most important value, even above your relationship, struggles with feeling ashamed about not doing things good enough, and they are afraid of being controlled by loved ones, you can see how these two stories coming together can make a whole bag of stress for all parties involved.
A few of my favorite books to help my clients manage this stress are Polysecure by Jessica Fern, The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz and the Four Agreements, also by Don Miguel Ruiz.
Can you help spell out some of the problems that come with the stress caused by relationships?
We expect things from partners but given many of us were taught to keep our feelings to ourselves and make sure everyone else is comfortable, we don’t verbalize our needs and grow resentful when our partner can’t read our mind. We respond to our partners in that resentment, that they know nothing about by the way, and they respond to how they perceive this attitude. It will be perceived through their lens of love, assumptions will be made and the cycle often causes stress. The primary cause and cure for relationship stress is communication. We have to be accountable for sharing our truth with others, while also learning to use mindfulness tools to self soothe. Our partners should know where we stand in case there is something that can be done collaboratively to make the relationship more of what you need. However, our partners are not our therapists and should not be made responsible for all the emotions we feel.
Can you share with our readers your “5 stress management strategies that you can use to eliminate stress from your relationships?” Please share a story or example for each.
Transparent and direct communication definitely decreases stress and confusion. Couples can use these phrases when they feel it’s time to gain some clarity and move differently to support each other:
I’m angry about…..
I’m sad about…..
I’m scared about……
I’m happy about…….
Increase Intimacy and trust by using tantric practices, such as partner Eye Gazing. When I have a couple who has been struggling with disconnection due to feeling unseen or unheard, to help them reconnect I will have them do the Position of Recognition. Weekly, or maybe more, the couple will sit across from each other, left hand facing down and right hand up, having their hands touch, and take time to look at each other through the “windows to their soul”. They have an opportunity to see past the body in front of them and perceive the inner being of their partner, who in essence is loving and beautiful.
If you are a couple who has those little stressors during the week of nagging each other or always calling each other out on the small things, I suggest practicing holding space for what’s important in a week’s time. I’ll have couples take a mason jar, and when things bother them through the week, take a small piece of paper, write it down and put it in the jar. Once a week, they sit down together, over coffee, wine, music, on the patio, the porch, the den, etc. They have a chance to pull out their complaints, decide if this thing is still worth addressing or if it resolved itself, speak about the things that are still important and commit to actively listening to your partner and working on solutions. This is good for couples who tend to let the small complaints in the week blow up and ruin their whole day. When you know there is designated time and that you have agreed to hear each other out respectfully, it’s validating and stress reducing.
Everyone in the relationship should have to read The Four Agreements and collectively uphold those tenants: Be Impeccable with your word, Don’t Take Things Personally, Don’t Make Assumptions, Always Do Your Best
`If you haven’t in the beginning, do it as soon as possible. Assess your values, how they align and how they don’t. This is preventative communication. I have my clients, on their own (not with their partner), spell out their values in 4 areas and during our assessment period, we discuss it to see if they are on or can be on the same page. One of the most stressful things to happen in a relationship is to not realize your partner’s values. The question I pose is, “What are your values/expectations in relationships in the areas of finances, health, intimacy and spirituality?” This assignment has made making decisions about their future much easier and minimized assumptions.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you to live with more joy in life?
Gabby Bernstein the Universe Has Your Back: From Fear to Faith
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Honestly, the movement I would create is the one I have. I believe that the things that happen to us in life, that we overcome, are the things that we are supposed to learn from and share with clothes. The meaning of life is to know your gifts and the purpose of it is to give it away (Pablo Picasso). My gifts lie in my ability to be resilient, my humor, honesty, kindness, and teaching in a way that encourages others to see themselves. With this, I’ve created the Glow Your Goddess movement, where I speak on tapping into the parts of yourself that we all have, that is powerful, that is limitless, deserving of love, worthy and valued by others. We have a community of folks being encouraged and in turn encouraging others toward their joy in life. I know that even though I cannot see the stretch in numbers, this movement has a ripple effect that will never go away. We are making our stamp on the world and changing it one glow up at a time.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.