Dr. Jenny Taitz

Let's take an example that unfolded in my house.

One morning when my husband, Adam, was tired and rushing, not a good combination, he dropped a full carton of milk on the kitchen floor.

Fuming, he cleaned it up rather aggressively, then cut his hand on the cake plate at the bottom of our refrigerator.

Unfortunately, we didn't have any bandages in the house.

So, feeling even more frustrated, he jumped in the car for a drugstore run.

Agitated and replaying his horrible morning on the way home from the drugstore, he then got into a minor car accident.

You can't make this stuff up.

Of course, I have plenty of examples of how I've exacerbated an already stressful situation.

Years ago, exhausted and newly back to work after the recent birth of my second child, I began gnawing endlessly on my fingernail to the point where I found myself in the emergency room with an antibiotic-resistant infection that required minor surgery.

If I had only paused, observed my stress-fueled urges, taken a few deep breaths, and tried one of the stress resets in this book, I'd have spared myself hours in the emergency room and multiple follow-up visits with an infectious disease specialist.

I'm pretty sure you have examples of your own.

Hi, I'm Dr. Jenny Tates.

I'm a clinical psychologist and I'm passionate about spreading hope to a wide audience.

So I often write about my favorite practices and my most recent book is called Stress Resets.

A stress reset is something you can do quickly, literally within minutes, that can change the course of how stress affects you.

One of the most unfortunate parts of being human is that we have a knack

for taking something minorly stressful, like imagine like almost like a little stain.

And we have a knack for like trying to fix it in a way that just makes it so much worse than it initially was.

And so a stress reset kind of gives you this opportunity to keep it contained and maybe even make it better.

Stress is these moments when we feel totally overwhelmed.