Becoming Stress-Proof: Dr Christine Cooper On How To Reduce Or Eliminate Stress From Your Relationships
An Interview With Savio Clemente
Make your needs clear — People are not mind readers. If you do not voice what you need, then they often will not be able to provide it. Someone may accidentally stumble upon providing you what you need without you telling them, but that is not an effective way for everyone to be able to provide and meet those needs.
With all that’s going on in our country, our economy, the world, and on social media, it feels like so many of us are under a great deal of stress. Relationships, in particular, can be stress-inducing. We know chronic stress can be as unhealthy as smoking a quarter of a pack a day. What are stress management strategies that people use to become “Stress-Proof? What are some great tweaks, hacks, and tips that help reduce or even eliminate stress? In this interview series, we are talking to authors, and mental health experts, who can share their strategies for reducing or eliminating stress. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Christine Cooper.
Dr. Christine Cooper is a reforming mean girl who has dedicated herself to continuously developing exceptional people skills and growing her emotional intelligence. She counts herself fortunate to have lasting world-wide friendships, strong family bonds, and rewarding patient relationships. A licensed pharmacist, Christine holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from The University of New Mexico. She revels in the adventure of working with people from all types of backgrounds to improve the practice of pharmacy. She calls Alexandria, VA, home.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
In life I often see people not listening to others, not learning about someone else, and as a result something negative happens in their own life because they end up treating that person poorly and that person stands up for themselves. In essence, the first person made their own life more difficult because they have not learned how to find the value of the other person. Oftentimes they do this without realizing that they are the reason their life is difficult — how valuing the other person, even a little, would have made their interaction smoother.
I made a lot of those same mistakes in my life because I did not stop to think about how my actions (or inactions) were impacting others. As a result, I had a lot of bumps and bruises in my path that forced me to learn a lot about navigating difficult situations between people in my life. I eventually learned the importance of valuing people and how that can make life much smoother in my early 30s.
Writing Finding Value was both uncomfortable and fun to do. Uncomfortable because it’s not easy to share the stories where I was not a good person. I much prefer sharing the stories where I am the hero (who doesn’t?!), but I knew writing a book of solely those stories wouldn’t be helpful to others.
The pieces I did find fun to write were the lessons I have learned, because I know others can learn from my mistakes. Our small, day-to-day interactions make up the majority of our lives, so taking some little steps to improve those has the potential to vastly improve life.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
Being kind is a good start, but it isn’t enough. You need to find the value in others to have quality relationships.
Kindness can only take our relationships so far. If I am kind to people but don’t pay attention to what they need, then I am not being a good friend. Learning to value people where we help them feel seen and understood for who they are means we can find something that connects us and helps both of us find a place where we can feel understood and seen, even if we don’t like each other.
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?
I am grateful for so many people in life. I am especially grateful for those who stuck around during that period of life where I wanted to be a good person but had a lot to learn to get there. It is not easy seeing someone you love have to work even harder in life because they don’t understand how improving their people skills can improve their life. Those closest to me cannot control my actions. They can provide their insights, though, and thankfully, they did to help me grow. Who I am now is a collection of their insights as well as some I have learned along my journey. This growth has not been linear, and there were certainly times when I would do something great followed by something that was detrimental. The people who helped me through those times, as well as celebrated my successes, are the ones I am most grateful for in life. These people include my parents, my siblings, and my close friends who are not shy in any way to tell me when they think I have messed up or when they are so proud of me it bursts out of them like sunshine.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?
My debut book, Finding Value, comes out on May 21st, 2024. I do have some ideas for what may come next, but after getting this labor of love out into the world, I believe a little rest is in order to help prepare me for the big project I decide to do next.
Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Let’s now talk about stress. How would you define stress?
Stress is multifactorial. Some stress comes from internal motivation, and other stress comes from external motivators. Sometimes these motivating factors are positive influences in our lives and other times they are negative, so the stress that comes from those can be positive and negative as well. Overall, though, too much stress, whether it be positive or negative, can negatively impact how our body functions, so we have to be aware of when positive stress tips over into the negative and calls for us to take a step back and regroup with some self-care.
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?
The short answer to this is everyone experiences stress. Yes, having basic needs met to ensure survival certainly helps in life; however, maintaining those needs and maintaining that quality of life are other stresses that comes into play. The body does not distinguish between these different types of stress because it simply recognizes it as stress. As a result, our body responds in the same fashion by putting us into survival mode where cortisol and adrenaline levels rise even when our basic needs are met.
Is stress necessarily a bad thing? What are some of the physical manifestations of being under a lot of stress? How does the human body react to stress? Can stress ever be good for us? 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?
No, not all stress is bad stress because it can be a highly motivating factor. This can help you accomplish more than you thought possible and to higher standards than you thought possible. However, it needs to be tempered with times of rest to allow your body a chance to recover and return to a calmer state. This allows your body to reduce its elevated cortisol levels as well as the other elevated hormones. When you have a continuous elevated stress level, these elevated levels of hormones running around your body can cause things like high blood pressure, weight gain, and other manifestations to occur.
This is why when I was asked what my next project is, I mentioned that my next step after the launch of this book is to take a rest. It is stressful to develop and market a book, and my body needs time to recover from it. I’m not a machine, and I recognize that. I think it is important to allow my body that time to recover so that when it is time to put efforts into my next project (which will become stressful during its development — that is a normal part of a project’s lifecycle), that my body can work on it without stressed becoming a normal state for it.
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 are stressful because we are all different. And thank goodness that we are! Life would be so boring if everybody thought the same way and did the same things. That would make us machine-like. I hope better for us as a society that we don’t want a bunch of human-machines that think the same way and do the same things. Instead, I strive for our differences to be celebrated so that we can find joy in those differences rather than stress and strife and anger.
Can you help spell out some of the problems that come with the stress caused by relationships?
Some of the problems that come with stress of relationships, particularly of relationships where you don’t see where the other person is coming from, can create excess strife in your life and in your community. We see this in the form of political differences that feel insurmountable because we have difficulties removing ourselves and our preconceived thoughts when hearing someone else’s perspective.
This can also happen with neighbor disputes. We have certainly seen in the news where there have been times when one neighbor does something and the other person retaliates, and there is this escalation of retaliating efforts, until there is a big event that causes catastrophic repercussions. This often happens because they don’t take the time to listen to the other person’s perspective and work to find a mutually beneficial solution.
Another area where stress can be seen in relationships is jealousy. In this particular instance I’m not talking about jealousy over concerns of cheating, although that is most certainly stressful as well. I am talking about concerns of jealousy for another person’s accomplishments. We don’t know anybody else’s full picture of what they are capable of until they’ve accomplished it. When someone has an accomplishment, and we let the sneaky snake of jealousy come in, it can cause a rift in how we connect with people. That creates a stress that can cause fractures in our relationships.
In all of these you have probably noticed a theme running through them — the stress of not understanding one another. This is why I think it is so important to stop and learn about the others in our life. Find the value they bring. Help those in your life feel seen and understood. Conflicts are a normal part of life, so when a conflict does come up, a person who feels seen and understood already knows that they will be listened to, their needs will be taken into consideration, and we can work together to resolve the conflict in a much smoother fashion as a result.
Here is the main question of our interview: 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.
Stress will always be there, so I don’t think it can be eliminated. I do believe it can be greatly reduced, though.
1 . Make your needs clear
People are not mind readers. If you do not voice what you need, then they often will not be able to provide it. Someone may accidentally stumble upon providing you what you need without you telling them, but that is not an effective way for everyone to be able to provide and meet those needs.
We need directions on how to get to places quickly and efficiently when we are driving a car, so it makes sense to me that we would also provide a road map to others for how to treat us. Without directions, they would be wandering around lost. This leads nicely into point #2.
2 . Be proactive in your approach
If you want people to meet your needs, let people know what you need before you need it. If you think about this in a work context when you hand a new project over to somebody, do you simply hand over the project and say good luck? Or do you tell them what the completion of the project needs to be?
People want to be successful, and they want to know what success looks like, whether that be completing a project or successfully being a good friend or partner. When you let people proactively know what you need, that person then gets to determine if they are capable of meeting that need, and how best to fit it in so both of your lives can run smoothly.
3 . Be curious
You want to do something similar in reciprocation with your friends and partners. When you ask questions and are proactive in your approach to meeting someone else’s needs, you are not being expected to be a mind reader. You are asking questions to determine where someone is at in their mental capacity, how you can help them potentially get to some next goal, if they maybe need space, or if that person just needs for you to sit with them and allow them time to process something big that has happened in their life.
Asking questions gives you the opportunity to understand a person, their perspective, where they are coming from, and what their needs are so you can determine if you can meet those needs.
4 . Actively listen
When you are asking questions of someone to determine all of those things mentioned in #3, you want to actively listen to what the person is saying. This means not interjecting your judgments and thoughts, and it means truly hearing what they are saying to you. This may mean that you need to ask follow-up questions to ensure that you get their message correct.
Active listening also helps you in understanding someone’s perspective about why they have come to that conclusion and created that perspective and how best to work with it.
5 . Remove yourself/don’t judge
The final piece I will mention is one of the biggest pieces, and it is to step away from any preconceived notions that you may have about a situation or about someone involved. Allow yourself to think from their side and perspective.
When your personal experiences and your judgments come into play, they can cloud your ability to connect with a person, and they can stop you from being able to find any sort of value in their perspective. This cuts you off from being able to learn about that person as they are right now, and it cuts you off from being able to find the most value that that person can bring.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you to live with more joy in life?
This is a tricky question to answer because everybody has different places where they find joy. For me, I love to read. In particular, I love to read sci-fi and fantasy novels where you get out of the everyday world that we live in, and you put yourself in this fantastical, very different place. You can imagine yourself living as the protagonist, doing things that are not possible in our world. I find that a lot of fun, and I find a lot of joy through immersing myself in those stories.
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? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
My movement would be about finding value in others. What is something you did or question you asked to learn more about your neighbor? Or the clerk helping you at the store? Or the coworker that you find difficult? Learning more about each other helps us find more potential areas of value.
The movement would encourage people to share those stories so that others are inspired to do the same in their lives.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
I can be found on Instagram and X by searching for @AuthorCCooper.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: Savio P. Clemente, TEDx speaker and Stage 3 cancer survivor, infuses transformative insights into every article. His journey battling cancer fuels a mission to empower survivors and industry leaders towards living a truly healthy, wealthy, and wise lifestyle. As a Board-Certified Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC, ACC), Savio guides readers to embrace self-discovery and rewrite narratives by loving their inner stranger, as outlined in his acclaimed TEDx talk: “7 Minutes to Wellness: How to Love Your Inner Stranger.” From his best-selling book to his impactful work as a media journalist covering resilience and wellness trends with notable celebrities and TV personalities, Savio’s words touch countless lives. His philosophy, “to know thyself is to heal thyself,” resonates in every piece.
